The Future of Asana: Co-founder Justin Rosenstein shares our vision

I see your point… and I agree with that statement about surveillance.

But then, why does it matter? If you’re doing your job and the company you work for is even remotely decent, how is this an issue? If someone higher up sees you aren’t finishing your tasks they can lend a helping hand one way or another. If you are doing something sneaky you don’t want them to see… chances are you shouldn’t be doing that to begin with… Right? If you really do just have a fear of people watching you… maybe start your own business because I guarantee there’s plenty of people watching you already without Asana’s new features.

How is this any different than cameras in restaurants, stores, etc. They are there for both the customer AND the employee. Not having them would actually be considered reckless and foolish in those industries. Why is it taboo to have systems like that in an office setting?

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The question is: what does that mean? Who desides what tasks/actions are part of “doing my job”? People are doing their job in many different ways and that’s okay. It’s probably even a good thing. What allows people to do their job their way, perhaps to experiment a little, is that they are not held accountable for every little thing they do. Now, what surveillance does is it makes people behave according to common norms (of how you’re supposed to behave). It is taking away bits of people’s freedom. Cameras in shops not only prevent shoplifting (do they?), they also prevent me, for example, from doing other things that are completely legal but that may look rediculous, for example. I have also caught myself thinking that what I’m doing might look suspicious from the perspective of that camera and adjusting my behaviour even though I was not in the remotest up to anything bad. Surveillance puts us on a stage where we perform for others. The more surveillance, the less privacy (in the sense of “moments in private”).

Well, I guess the emphasis is on “if”. And, again: what does “decent” mean? Who defines that? And if my organization is “decent” (by whatever standards), why does that mean surveillance is not a problem?

One thing is sure: the organization itself (i.e. its leadership) will always deem itself “decent”.

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So you dont want your manager to know for fact that you’re on track? You want them to imagine instead?

I think it’s not about privacy or surveillance It’s more about transparency and collaboration.

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My mouth just dropped!!

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  1. The OKR Overview-Feature might help make our whole company switch to Asana. At the moment, we use a different tool for OKRs. And we even discussed of having to give up on Asana. In other words: For our relationship with Asana this might be huge.

  2. We love the Timeline feature. Thank you!

  3. The more one looks at Timeline, the more obvious it seems that Boards was created completely separately. The design on Timeline just seems Asana-like. It works. Whereas the design of boards does not look like Asana at all.

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Although Asana-Timeline has some nice - paradigm shifting even - features, it is worlds apart from Instagantt and not a replacement for it. Without Instagantt, Asana isn’t comprehensive enough to be a serious production management tool. Thank goodness for Instagantt!

To make Asana REALLY awesome, please check out my assessment of this recent feature and VOTE for a modification to provide the functionality as stated on the box for “Comment only” permissions.

Asana + Instagantt + above feature correction = awesome (and fun to use!) productivity management tool

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I agree, Matthew. When we first rolled out Asana, some people didn’t like the idea that the team manager could keep track of what they were doing. They didn’t understand that it was about getting a much broader overview and managing resources overall. Our manger doesn’t have the time, or desire, to keep track of every individual’s output. She just wants to know if we’re hitting the key milestones across the whole team. If not, she can quickly find out why and do something about it. We’re in a much better position as a team, now that we have actual data to back up our projections.

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I’m not going to go much further down this hole since we obviously have different ideas and won’t be changing each other’s minds. I just want to point out that the cameras are not actually there to STOP shoplifting. They do help. They do deter some people who might be on the fence. But the point of the cameras is to review the footage and figure out ways to make your store function better so that less shoplifting occurs. If all you do is stare at a camera all day and wait for shoplifters you’ve missed the point. In the same way, a good team leader/manager/executive is not going to sit and watch you to see if you’re doing your job. They will simply use information to pinpoint weaknesses, then drill down and figure out how to fix those weaknesses. The ONLY time a manager is “watching” you is if you’ve given them a reason at which point 9/10 times that’s on you (OR you’ve got yourself a bad manager and Asana isn’t the problem).

This strategy and vision gets only one comment: WOW!!!
This is truly amazing - this enterprise level dashboard from the entire company level, down to teams, to projects and tasks will take ASANA to a totally new level!
Well done!! :clap::clap::clap::sun_with_face::sun_with_face::sun_with_face:

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Hi @Alexis!! It seems amazing!!
The only thing that isn’t clear enough is the way that Asana is looking at the need of integrating with other systems.
For our team it has been a big improvement working with Asana, but still we haven’t been able to have only one workflow or at least only one way to communicate in the entire organization.
That would be great

@Rashad_Issa 100% agree. It awesome how they have progressed ASANA…

The inclusion of Timeline and the some but not all of the content in the future vision of Asana has made me even more refocus on how I can get the best out of an amazing product.

Yes not everything is perfect or works exactly how I would like it to work… But considering how much it does and how much easier it make my daily life, I am more than happy.

Great work Asana Team… Very much look forward to seeing how this amazing product keeps progressing.

Jason.

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I’m testing it out now, I really love Asana and tell everyone I know, this is the project mgt tool to use! The future tools looks so yummy I can’t stand it! AI assistant, yeah!

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wow…

This vision is mind blowing…

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Great features to be introduced! My manager was really excited when he saw the CEO reporting feature in the second half of the video. Could you please point out where to find this feature? I am guessing that after one and a half years, the layout has changed a lot so that I couldn’t find this function by myself. Thanks!

Hi @Doris_J_Ma and welcome to the Forum!

This is our long-term vision for Asana; we recently implemented our new Portfolio and Workload features which is another step toward executing our vision, but it will take us another while before we get to the version you’re seeing in this video!

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