Hi all, I’m looking for advice on how to communicate to those who make their projects private and/or comment only. I feel this defeats the purpose of transparency, visibility, and collaboration. How would you or do you approach this situation if/when you see it happening?
It’s a pure management issue, and I would expect each person’s manager to set the standard that applies. I would differentiate shared projects (“Marketing Initiatives 2020”), vs. people’s individual to-do lists. TBH, I don’t ever want to see people’s personal actions like “Tidy desk” or “Fill out benefits enrollment” in my searches, and those should stay in a private project.
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Thanks, Stephanie. No, I don’t mean personal tasks. Specifically I’m seeing it around campaigns and projects that are shared across a group of people. I’m seeing projects being “invite only” which I think is taking us back to the lack of transparency and collaboration - which is one of the reasons we decided to invest in the tool.
I think there is immense value in being able to see other project happening, even if you’re not directly involved in them. And having the ability to “stumble upon” projects that might affect different groups. Especially with us all being remote and not having the ability to have those “water cooler/hallway” conversations. I might notice a project that’s adjacent to something I’m working on and I’m able to reuse assets or find out about things in which I might eventually be involved.
Am I just a busy body or what? 
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No, not a busybody. Every organization needs to find the right mix. Some people may be trying to cut down on what they have to take account of, and others are open to expansion.
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We talked about and set up best practices that included what should and shouldn’t be private/visible and explained why that is. That seems to work well, as we’ve got no issues with this whatsoever. .
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I totally agree with you @anon42353856, I said the same thing to a client just last week.
A few years ago, it wasn’t possible to regulate access rights in such detail, and I found that people tended to share more. Today, Asana allows more tuning, and I wrote about it in a post this morning because I find it difficult to know who finally has access to what: A tool to check project and team security at a glance 🔐.
According to me, transparency is linked to the culture of the company and the practices of the managers. If the management shows the example, then it will follow, and people will have confidence. Transparency allows collaboration as you explain it very well, and it is the drifts that often lead to the creation of silos.
Setting conventions as mentioned by @Nicolas_Fischer is a great first step indeed.
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Great idea, @Nicolas_Fischer! Thanks!
Thanks, @Julien_RENAUD! Yes, definitely a culture and trust issue, I think. Thanks for the resource. I’ll check it out.
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