Achieving Clarity in Uncertain Times

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:00.250 Mhm 2 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:02.740 Yeah. 3 00:00:05.640 --> 00:00:10.340 Hi everyone welcome back to be to be growth. My name is Olivia Hurley and 4 00:00:10.340 --> 00:00:16.129 today I am joined by Dave King who is the head of marketing at Asana Dave, 5 00:00:16.129 --> 00:00:21.080 how are you doing today? I do a great Olivia, it's so good to see you. Thanks 6 00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:26.400 so much for having me. Oh my gosh! Of course. Well you know we have all heard 7 00:00:26.410 --> 00:00:32.220 the sentence, we live in unprecedented times, probably more than we can bear 8 00:00:32.229 --> 00:00:37.250 and while it has certainly lost some of its gravitas, it hasn't, it still rings 9 00:00:37.250 --> 00:00:41.680 true. And so I think as marketers, you know thinking about our conversation 10 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:45.470 since we last talked, I think as marketers were longing for some 11 00:00:45.470 --> 00:00:52.640 trailblazers to you know peer into that foggy future and make a way forward and 12 00:00:52.650 --> 00:00:56.540 Dave, I consider you and your team at Asana, some of those trailblazers and 13 00:00:56.540 --> 00:01:02.550 I'm I'm so glad that we get to unpack some of what you have started to pave 14 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:08.210 into the future today. Um and I was wondering can we just start at the very, 15 00:01:08.210 --> 00:01:14.350 very beginning? Can I just ask what is the current state of work for marketers? 16 00:01:15.040 --> 00:01:20.520 Oh gosh! I mean you're right Olivia, unprecedented times. We saw all the TV 17 00:01:20.520 --> 00:01:25.510 spots and we've lived that reality over the last 16 months. I think what people 18 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:30.930 aren't talking about as much is that the reality of knowledge work really 19 00:01:30.940 --> 00:01:35.510 isn't that great right now there was a great adam grant with this great piece 20 00:01:35.510 --> 00:01:41.130 in the new york times about languishing and it resonated with me because I 21 00:01:41.130 --> 00:01:48.780 think it put language on what a lot of us are feeling, which is that blah of, 22 00:01:48.790 --> 00:01:54.530 you know, it's kind of the middle child between complete burnout and you know, 23 00:01:54.530 --> 00:01:58.970 thriving and being engaged in your work. And 16 months ago, all of us as 24 00:01:58.970 --> 00:02:05.240 marketers, we were asked to rise to the occasion to take care of our customers, 25 00:02:05.250 --> 00:02:09.949 to take care of our business, to take care of our families and that came at 26 00:02:09.949 --> 00:02:18.120 the expense of taking care of ourselves. And so, you know, I feel that duality 27 00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:24.440 myself of the current condition which is, gosh, I I love my work. I've never 28 00:02:24.440 --> 00:02:28.950 felt more thankful to be able to have that kind of uh the impact and the 29 00:02:28.950 --> 00:02:34.540 great feel grateful that I can do what I get to do and dealing with the 30 00:02:34.540 --> 00:02:40.640 reality of Health issues across the team, both mental and physical. I've 31 00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:48.250 been homeschooling three kids for 16 months and just that that blah. So we 32 00:02:48.250 --> 00:02:52.830 actually um we just did this uh this study that we call the anatomy of work 33 00:02:52.830 --> 00:02:58.260 index is one of the largest Uh studies of knowledge workers across geography, 34 00:02:58.260 --> 00:03:03.250 ease. 13,000 knowledge workers in Australia and new Zealand, japan 35 00:03:03.250 --> 00:03:13.250 Germany Singapore, us and UK. And what the study found was really consistent 36 00:03:13.250 --> 00:03:20.280 with Adam Grant wrote about languishing is people or people are struggling. And 37 00:03:20.280 --> 00:03:25.470 so a couple of the stats, 60% of knowledge workers time is now being 38 00:03:25.470 --> 00:03:30.130 spent on work about work that busywork, who's doing, what are they doing at 39 00:03:30.130 --> 00:03:36.380 status meetings, email. That's just gotten worse during the pandemic. If 40 00:03:36.380 --> 00:03:40.940 you work in a large organization, over 5000 employees, that increases to 63% 41 00:03:40.950 --> 00:03:47.640 is 2/3 of your time not doing marketing, but doing Doing busywork burnouts on 42 00:03:47.640 --> 00:03:51.680 the rise seven and 10 people have experienced it in the last year. Um 43 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:55.360 We're working later, uh an hour of additional meetings per week. We're 44 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:59.690 working an hour later per, per evening. And a lot of the tools that we really 45 00:03:59.700 --> 00:04:06.200 have relied on to stay connected, video and messaging those have just kind of 46 00:04:06.200 --> 00:04:13.410 led to a greater sense of fatigue. So as marketers, we feel this and I think 47 00:04:13.410 --> 00:04:18.390 it's up to all of us is marketing leaders is what can we do to create the 48 00:04:18.390 --> 00:04:23.200 conditions for our teams to kind of move from that languishing to thrive in. 49 00:04:23.200 --> 00:04:26.070 So that's what I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and 50 00:04:26.070 --> 00:04:31.050 experimenting with and and the team and I on how we can do that and we found a 51 00:04:31.050 --> 00:04:35.370 few things that are working. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm curious you 52 00:04:35.380 --> 00:04:40.290 mentioned the importance of impact and I'm curious what that means to you. 53 00:04:40.290 --> 00:04:46.250 What do you need to be doing or feeling that allows you to know that you are 54 00:04:46.250 --> 00:04:52.730 having impact. Mm. Yeah. I mean that's the kind of the sad reality that a lot 55 00:04:52.730 --> 00:04:57.870 of us feel is they were working harder than ever. And yet the impact that 56 00:04:57.870 --> 00:05:02.620 we're having is the same or less than we had in the past and what we have 57 00:05:02.630 --> 00:05:08.840 found is the key to closing that impact gap is creating clarity, which is, hey, 58 00:05:08.840 --> 00:05:14.300 what is the thing that I am working on? How does that matter to the goals of 59 00:05:14.300 --> 00:05:17.710 the team and the mission of the organization? So that's the first thing 60 00:05:17.710 --> 00:05:22.460 is like, do I know what I need to work on to really have an impact. And the 61 00:05:22.460 --> 00:05:28.530 second thing is, do I have the time and space to actually do my craft or is my 62 00:05:28.530 --> 00:05:32.870 calendar so filled with all the busy work that I can't even work on it? So I 63 00:05:32.870 --> 00:05:38.640 think as marketers were in this unprecedented time, it is going to. I 64 00:05:38.640 --> 00:05:41.620 think the only thing that we know for sure is that we're gonna need to adapt 65 00:05:41.630 --> 00:05:45.010 continually. And I think the key thing for us is how do we create clarity for 66 00:05:45.010 --> 00:05:51.470 ourselves and our our teams? Do you think that that is the next big step 67 00:05:51.470 --> 00:05:58.460 for distributed work? This idea of people being just working on work and 68 00:05:58.470 --> 00:06:03.430 being remote and just the completely different arena that we're now in, Do 69 00:06:03.430 --> 00:06:09.880 you think clarity is the next move? It we're going through the, what I think 70 00:06:09.880 --> 00:06:14.400 is the largest workplace experiment in history of all these new models, 71 00:06:14.410 --> 00:06:19.250 totally remote work, hybrid work for day work weeks, distributed global 72 00:06:19.250 --> 00:06:23.940 teams. It's really exciting. It does mean that that water cooler 73 00:06:23.940 --> 00:06:28.270 conversation and some of the techniques that we have relied on the past are no 74 00:06:28.270 --> 00:06:32.250 longer going to work. So the thing that everyone needs, no matter what model 75 00:06:32.250 --> 00:06:37.250 they have, this kind of extreme clarity on what is my responsibility as an 76 00:06:37.250 --> 00:06:41.130 individual who's doing what, what are they doing it and how does that connect 77 00:06:41.130 --> 00:06:45.440 with the goals of the mission? I think in doing that, there's kind of like 78 00:06:45.440 --> 00:06:49.660 most things in marketing, there's an art and a science to it and from a 79 00:06:49.660 --> 00:06:54.740 science perspective, these are kind of evidence based methods that are really 80 00:06:54.750 --> 00:06:59.870 helped teams achieve that kind of clarity I think, you know, I think 81 00:06:59.870 --> 00:07:04.600 there's really kind of three things, at least that we've been focused on and 82 00:07:04.600 --> 00:07:10.890 the first is around the power of really effective goal setting and using goals 83 00:07:10.890 --> 00:07:16.770 to move from being a micro manager to a macro manager. You know, it's funny 84 00:07:16.770 --> 00:07:22.550 during times of crises or times of extreme change, there's often a 85 00:07:22.550 --> 00:07:26.790 tendency to want to micromanage, you know, hey, we got to jump in and make 86 00:07:26.790 --> 00:07:31.540 sure everybody, you know, and that's the exact wrong thing that we should be 87 00:07:31.540 --> 00:07:36.570 doing and not many of us have lived through a pandemic. But there are other 88 00:07:36.570 --> 00:07:41.740 organizations that have a lot of organizational experience in dealing 89 00:07:41.740 --> 00:07:46.890 with extreme uncertainty and the military is one of them and a couple of 90 00:07:46.890 --> 00:07:51.360 books that have been written that I really love. One is team of teams, the 91 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:56.730 others turned the ship around and these talk a lot about how the command and 92 00:07:56.730 --> 00:08:02.170 control style of hierarchy just does not work when you have to work in 93 00:08:02.180 --> 00:08:08.970 extreme uncertain environments. And so I think we can borrow from that. And 94 00:08:08.980 --> 00:08:12.360 the key, the antidote to micro management is really effective goal 95 00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:18.210 setting. And so every marketing team, you know, of course, sets uh sets goals. 96 00:08:18.220 --> 00:08:23.500 They've got their targets and the strategies to achieve them. The key 97 00:08:23.500 --> 00:08:28.220 thing that a lot of marketing teams don't do is do the bottoms up process 98 00:08:28.220 --> 00:08:33.549 of having each individual create and set their uncles that connect to the 99 00:08:33.559 --> 00:08:38.490 organization's goals and mission. So what we do on our team is we have we 100 00:08:38.490 --> 00:08:44.490 have a few team goals, they're really clear and laid out. We then each of 101 00:08:44.490 --> 00:08:48.550 those goals has a couple, has a few strategies that drive to those goals 102 00:08:49.140 --> 00:08:56.940 and then every team member on the team Sets 1, 2, 3 personal goals and 103 00:08:56.940 --> 00:09:05.180 connects them to those team goals. And this does two things. The first is each 104 00:09:05.190 --> 00:09:09.270 individual, a team is setting their goals on things they want to work on 105 00:09:09.280 --> 00:09:15.210 and they feel the agency and the autonomy and the accountability of of 106 00:09:15.220 --> 00:09:21.110 creating their own goals. Secondly, is they share those goals with their cross 107 00:09:21.110 --> 00:09:27.440 functional colleagues and their manager. And what that does is it creates a 108 00:09:27.440 --> 00:09:34.320 license for them to focus on their goals and not and and to say no to 109 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:37.830 those kind of what I call random acts of marketing that happened to come at 110 00:09:37.830 --> 00:09:42.670 you every single day. So it gives each individual clarity on what they're 111 00:09:42.670 --> 00:09:46.850 working on and it gives clarity to the other people on the team. So that's the 112 00:09:46.880 --> 00:09:50.740 first thing is really effective goal setting and we all pay for service to 113 00:09:50.740 --> 00:09:54.350 it. And yeah, I think none of us probably do it as well as we could. 114 00:09:54.360 --> 00:10:00.280 Well I love that. It's funny how sometimes simplifying down is the exact 115 00:10:00.290 --> 00:10:06.010 answer. And I think what you're saying, what it reminded me of is like little 116 00:10:06.010 --> 00:10:11.910 league soccer when you're all hyper focused on your goal. But you each have 117 00:10:11.910 --> 00:10:16.960 your your roles and you just, you just escalate that idea up to like big 118 00:10:16.960 --> 00:10:22.010 stakes, marketing awesome endeavors. But it's still the same throughout life 119 00:10:22.010 --> 00:10:25.600 like having knowing what you are responsible for and knowing that your 120 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:28.950 other teammates are going to help you get there too. That's like that's like 121 00:10:28.950 --> 00:10:34.340 the the way to also infuse all that with passion. Yeah, I love that. My my 122 00:10:34.340 --> 00:10:37.970 daughters are soccer players and that's a good, that's a good analogy. Could 123 00:10:37.970 --> 00:10:44.300 you imagine if you tried to direct a soccer player on where they need to be 124 00:10:44.300 --> 00:10:49.070 on the field at any given time and how they need to know you, you lay out a 125 00:10:49.070 --> 00:10:54.120 vision of what you're trying to achieve as a group and then you trust them to 126 00:10:54.120 --> 00:10:57.380 figure out the best way to do it. Marketers are extremely creative and I 127 00:10:57.380 --> 00:11:01.890 find every time we give our team a chance to solve a problem, they do it 128 00:11:01.900 --> 00:11:06.970 far better than I would. Oh man, I love that. That's so, that's so cool. So 129 00:11:06.980 --> 00:11:13.340 yeah, tell me more. Oh well, my second kind of evidence based approach to 130 00:11:13.350 --> 00:11:20.860 clarity is to not reinvent the wheel but to mass produce it. And I am still, 131 00:11:21.340 --> 00:11:25.550 you know, there there are these workflows that we do as marketers, 132 00:11:25.560 --> 00:11:29.820 probably dozens of them on, on every team that we do every single day. Um 133 00:11:29.830 --> 00:11:34.470 take, you know, creating, creating content, managing the editorial 134 00:11:34.470 --> 00:11:39.720 calendar, conceiving of a content piece, drafting it, publishing it, promoting 135 00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:45.560 it, um, take an event or webinar. There's a series of steps and those 136 00:11:45.560 --> 00:11:52.410 steps, typically in many organizations reside in the minds of the team member 137 00:11:52.410 --> 00:11:55.960 who's closest to that problem. Maybe they've documented a google doc or 138 00:11:55.960 --> 00:12:02.170 maybe they got some tribal knowledge, but in a world that's distributed in a 139 00:12:02.170 --> 00:12:05.610 world where there's higher employee turnover, where new employees are 140 00:12:05.610 --> 00:12:12.240 coming in all the time. How do you product ties those workflows? So Henry 141 00:12:12.240 --> 00:12:15.950 Ford didn't invent the wheel or the automobile, but figured out how to mass 142 00:12:15.950 --> 00:12:20.040 produce it. And I think what we need to do is product ties are workflows, 143 00:12:20.040 --> 00:12:25.800 whether it is new employee onboarding, whether it's how to do a blog post, how 144 00:12:25.800 --> 00:12:33.510 to do a creative brief or set up a campaign or run a community event. So 145 00:12:33.520 --> 00:12:37.860 what we do is we use this on it for this. But we, we have, we template ties 146 00:12:37.860 --> 00:12:43.370 these And create a series of tasks with rules. So if you're going to kick off a 147 00:12:43.370 --> 00:12:48.620 campaign, you click one button and your work back schedule is there and tasks 148 00:12:48.620 --> 00:12:55.370 are assigned to each member of the other way. And what's cool is we do, 149 00:12:55.370 --> 00:13:00.580 for example, we do a couple 100 events per year. We do several dozen campaigns 150 00:13:00.590 --> 00:13:05.790 at the end of each of those events or campaign, we revisit the process. How 151 00:13:05.790 --> 00:13:09.350 can we make this better? We make those small adjustments and we publish it 152 00:13:09.350 --> 00:13:14.210 back to the library. So a new member of the team, whether they're joining 153 00:13:14.210 --> 00:13:19.750 remotely or in an office, they can come in and go to the marketing library and 154 00:13:19.750 --> 00:13:25.130 see ah I can click this button to create a campaign, I can click this to 155 00:13:25.140 --> 00:13:30.200 kick off a blog post or to get the design team to do something all in one 156 00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:35.630 spot. So mass producing the wheel rather than reinventing them. I think 157 00:13:35.630 --> 00:13:41.040 that's genius and just absolutely genius period. I all you know what it 158 00:13:41.040 --> 00:13:47.150 also makes me think of is a lot of job descriptions I have have this this line 159 00:13:47.150 --> 00:13:52.600 that says like doesn't need a lot of hand holding for our ideal applicant is 160 00:13:52.600 --> 00:13:57.920 able to come in and just execute. I mean it's interesting, you know, the 161 00:13:57.920 --> 00:14:02.230 reality of getting to a new job though is you get so far and then you have a 162 00:14:02.230 --> 00:14:05.800 question because you don't know how to do something that's specific to the 163 00:14:05.810 --> 00:14:10.280 company or or you don't you know you don't have institutional information or 164 00:14:10.280 --> 00:14:13.650 something like that and you end up feeling like you need a little bit hand 165 00:14:13.650 --> 00:14:19.160 holding. Oh yeah. I mean marketing is one of the most functionally diverse 166 00:14:19.160 --> 00:14:23.760 departments in any company and let's say you bring in just some really 167 00:14:23.760 --> 00:14:29.220 terrific content creator, they're great writer, they should be able to focus on 168 00:14:29.220 --> 00:14:34.570 their writing. Not okay, how do I go find the web dev engineer? How do I get 169 00:14:34.570 --> 00:14:40.200 the web project manager to teach me how to upload this? How do I go get a 170 00:14:40.200 --> 00:14:44.280 design? Let people focus on their craft and automate the rest. Oh my gosh, 171 00:14:44.280 --> 00:14:49.180 that's genius. And it means that when somebody goes off to another 172 00:14:49.180 --> 00:14:52.950 opportunity, you didn't just lose all of that knowledge. Which is you know 173 00:14:52.950 --> 00:14:56.090 what you were saying at the beginning, which is like just terrible. You're 174 00:14:56.090 --> 00:15:00.720 like, I need you to come back and this is a lot of the intellectual property 175 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:06.190 of the secret sauce on, you know, of any marketing team is the way in which 176 00:15:06.190 --> 00:15:11.480 we do things. So if it's, you know, one of our customers uber, what they're 177 00:15:11.480 --> 00:15:15.600 great at is how they roll out new services in new cities. This is 178 00:15:15.600 --> 00:15:21.110 thousands of tasks. The ability to template is that product, by the way, 179 00:15:21.110 --> 00:15:24.710 there's no software that works for rolling out ride sharing services in 180 00:15:24.710 --> 00:15:29.140 new cities. But if you can template ties those and publish them, then 181 00:15:29.140 --> 00:15:33.850 you're right. Any individual moves on, at least that knowledge is collected. 182 00:15:34.840 --> 00:15:39.460 The third thing I think a lot of teams are certainly with is just how do I 183 00:15:39.460 --> 00:15:45.160 have time to focus on my work and my craft and this is where we really need 184 00:15:45.160 --> 00:15:51.640 to engineer our calendars for greater focus and flow. So we hosted a couple 185 00:15:51.640 --> 00:15:57.030 months ago, we we did we hosted this focus and flow of summit. It was really 186 00:15:57.030 --> 00:16:01.580 cool. We brought in some of the world's leading researchers on human 187 00:16:01.580 --> 00:16:06.660 performance. These were folks like Dr Sahar yussef, who's a neuroscientist, 188 00:16:07.040 --> 00:16:14.310 Dr Michael drove a um Adam Grant from Warton and we just got the latest on 189 00:16:14.310 --> 00:16:19.060 brain science and the conditions to make humans successful. Let me share 190 00:16:19.060 --> 00:16:24.380 this with customers. The one of the interesting findings was the human 191 00:16:24.380 --> 00:16:31.130 brain is a focused machine. It is not designed to multitask and there's huge 192 00:16:31.130 --> 00:16:35.340 cognitive impairment anytime we're trying to do multiple things. But if we 193 00:16:35.340 --> 00:16:41.260 can have big blocks to focus and work, the brain is incredibly creative and 194 00:16:41.260 --> 00:16:47.130 productive. Now, what was kind of humbling in that experience was most of 195 00:16:47.130 --> 00:16:52.280 us, if we look at our calendar is a train wreck, you know, it's And it got 196 00:16:52.280 --> 00:16:56.320 worse during the pandemic where we used to have our meetings, but then we all 197 00:16:56.320 --> 00:17:00.460 got zoom fatigue. So we just shorten the meetings. So now our days like 30 198 00:17:00.460 --> 00:17:07.130 minute meetings, back to back to back uh messages, emails, we have no time to 199 00:17:07.130 --> 00:17:12.720 focus. So we designed and released a whole suite of features to help with 200 00:17:12.730 --> 00:17:17.690 focus and flow. And one of those, the key is bringing your task list in your 201 00:17:17.690 --> 00:17:23.760 calendar into harmony. So if you have a task to work on, let's say you're doing 202 00:17:23.760 --> 00:17:29.160 some analysis on pipeline generation, great, you're going to need two or 203 00:17:29.160 --> 00:17:33.590 three hours to really get deep into that. We introduced a smart calendar 204 00:17:33.590 --> 00:17:37.840 assistant where it will go and find that block on your calendar. This is 205 00:17:37.840 --> 00:17:41.990 through our partnership of clockwise and it'll even rearrange your calendar 206 00:17:41.990 --> 00:17:46.610 so that you can have three hours just devoted to that task of doing your 207 00:17:46.610 --> 00:17:52.340 pipeline analysis. So one is, technology can help to is 208 00:17:52.350 --> 00:17:57.260 organizationally we've, we've created um no medium Wednesday. So 209 00:17:57.270 --> 00:18:02.480 organizational wide, nobody can set up an internal meeting on Wednesday. So at 210 00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:08.620 that time for just focus deep focused work and of course most of us need more 211 00:18:08.620 --> 00:18:11.490 than just Wednesday. So carving out those work blocks throughout the week 212 00:18:11.490 --> 00:18:17.620 is a great way to engineer time for focusing a marketer. You're probably 213 00:18:17.620 --> 00:18:21.580 brainstorming outside the box ideas to engage your prospects and customers 214 00:18:21.580 --> 00:18:25.220 working remotely and you've probably thought about sending them direct mail 215 00:18:25.220 --> 00:18:29.350 to break through the zoom fatigue. But how do you ship personalized gifts to 216 00:18:29.350 --> 00:18:33.660 remote decision makers? When you have no idea where they're sitting at B two 217 00:18:33.660 --> 00:18:37.410 B growth. We use the craft and platform to send hyper personalized gifts to 218 00:18:37.420 --> 00:18:41.440 anyone working from anywhere. Crafting makes it easy for your prospects and 219 00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:45.960 customers to pick and personalize their own gift in real time and offers highly 220 00:18:45.960 --> 00:18:49.880 secure data capture. So decision makers feel comfortable submitting their home 221 00:18:49.880 --> 00:18:54.190 addresses for shipping purposes to get your own personalized craft and gift. 222 00:18:54.200 --> 00:18:58.750 Go to craft um dot io slash growth to schedule a demo and receive a 223 00:18:58.750 --> 00:19:02.510 complimentary personalized gift from craft. Um To claim your personalized 224 00:19:02.510 --> 00:19:09.710 gift, go to craft um dot io slash growth. I'm so curious about that. No 225 00:19:09.710 --> 00:19:13.010 meeting Wednesday. So on behalf of all of the people who are going to go, well, 226 00:19:13.010 --> 00:19:18.210 Dave like what if I need something or you know, what if I what is your 227 00:19:18.210 --> 00:19:22.400 response to? You know, like emergency flare ups are the marketing, you know, 228 00:19:22.400 --> 00:19:26.100 the invasive marketing tests or what you're referring to? What does that 229 00:19:26.100 --> 00:19:30.420 look like in practicality? Do things just, do you find that that you are far 230 00:19:30.420 --> 00:19:33.730 more efficient because you have that time block where things get delayed or 231 00:19:33.740 --> 00:19:38.260 what's your next client? They get done monday, Tuesday, thursday and friday. 232 00:19:38.270 --> 00:19:43.240 And it's so funny the emergency flare ups, how many things we think our 233 00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:48.570 emergency flare ups versus actually are, is dramatically different. So on 234 00:19:48.570 --> 00:19:55.190 Wednesday it is deep focused work. No meetings can be scheduled. Now, is 235 00:19:55.190 --> 00:19:59.630 there an occasional issue that could get resolved on slack or on asana? 236 00:19:59.640 --> 00:20:05.020 Absolutely, of course. And people are still are working in our responsive, 237 00:20:05.030 --> 00:20:07.960 but all those things are like, hey, let's just let's get on a 30 minute 238 00:20:07.960 --> 00:20:12.990 call because this is really 99% of those can wait for Thursday. I think 239 00:20:12.990 --> 00:20:18.020 that's so redemptive in some ways. What you're talking about is deep diving 240 00:20:18.020 --> 00:20:24.590 into individual tasks, becoming an expert, really, really owning your work. 241 00:20:24.590 --> 00:20:31.000 And I think I certainly have, you know, in many ways, like bought into the best 242 00:20:31.010 --> 00:20:34.790 way that I can do my work is the quickest. And I think that that's 243 00:20:34.800 --> 00:20:39.860 that's actually genuinely beautiful to me because I think like you said, the 244 00:20:39.940 --> 00:20:45.890 or dr Yousef said, the human brain is a focus machine, that's like I crave that 245 00:20:45.890 --> 00:20:51.160 and I am so excited that you guys are doing that well, we have all mistaken 246 00:20:51.170 --> 00:20:56.530 activity for productivity for so long. You know, it feels it feels great to be 247 00:20:56.530 --> 00:21:01.270 needed to be constantly triaging and responding and and putting out fires. 248 00:21:01.280 --> 00:21:05.140 And yet when you look at the science and the evidence of our we actually 249 00:21:05.140 --> 00:21:09.040 more productive. I think what all these neuroscientists have come back and 250 00:21:09.040 --> 00:21:15.510 study after study is No, we're not. It may you may feel that dopamine hit of 251 00:21:15.520 --> 00:21:19.980 working to put out the fire, but you're not actually being the most productive. 252 00:21:19.990 --> 00:21:24.240 And as marketers, we became marketers could we love the craft. So how do you 253 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:29.900 create space to actually do the work rather than all the work about the work? 254 00:21:30.100 --> 00:21:36.030 I love that work about the work. Now you mentioned there's also an art to 255 00:21:36.040 --> 00:21:41.860 bringing about clarity to always always are in science. Yeah, it's funny we do 256 00:21:41.860 --> 00:21:45.530 this naturally as marketers with our customers but we often forget to do it 257 00:21:45.540 --> 00:21:51.750 internally with our teams. And that is using the power of story to really move 258 00:21:51.750 --> 00:21:57.250 from managing work to leading work. And and what I mean there is um 259 00:21:57.260 --> 00:22:03.870 storytelling has been around for about 30,000 years. So around that time in 260 00:22:03.870 --> 00:22:08.630 caves around the world, they found all these archaeologists found depictions 261 00:22:08.630 --> 00:22:13.670 of of story and it's largely believed that this has been the primary form of 262 00:22:13.670 --> 00:22:19.290 knowledge transfer throughout millennia for humans. If you believe the work of 263 00:22:19.300 --> 00:22:25.180 evil hariri and what he documents in sapiens, people say this is our super 264 00:22:25.180 --> 00:22:30.480 power as a species, is to coordinate with one another based on these shared 265 00:22:30.490 --> 00:22:35.740 myths or stories. So it's just people have been around the campfire telling 266 00:22:35.740 --> 00:22:42.360 stories about how to coordinate to grow crops or find find food and coordinate 267 00:22:42.360 --> 00:22:45.510 with one another. That's been around for thousands of years. Our brains are 268 00:22:45.510 --> 00:22:49.730 conditioned. You know, in contrast, the printing press has been around for a 269 00:22:49.730 --> 00:22:53.480 little more than 500 years. Modern statistics. A few 100 years. Data 270 00:22:53.480 --> 00:22:58.870 science a couple decades. And so we tell stories to our customers. We 271 00:22:58.870 --> 00:23:03.510 forget to do it internally. I'll give you an example. So we have started to 272 00:23:03.520 --> 00:23:08.120 tell, especially as team members have been distributed remote. We've made a 273 00:23:08.120 --> 00:23:12.650 point to not just share the documentation of things but to share a 274 00:23:12.650 --> 00:23:18.600 bunch of stories. And so we have this uh, this great brand team at Asana and 275 00:23:18.600 --> 00:23:22.470 they're responsible for delivering incredible brand experience. There's 276 00:23:22.470 --> 00:23:26.070 tons of rules and guidelines and things on what to do and not too. And we don't 277 00:23:26.070 --> 00:23:31.260 share any of that with any Asana team members. What we do share is a bunch of 278 00:23:31.260 --> 00:23:37.000 stories. We share about a time that we hosted an event in Berlin in the middle 279 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:42.240 of a rainstorm. We share how the weight our culinary chef plans the monday 280 00:23:42.240 --> 00:23:48.320 morning breakfast. We talk about how the apple app store the, the app 281 00:23:48.320 --> 00:23:54.510 updates, why they're written in the form of rap lyrics. So these stories 282 00:23:54.520 --> 00:23:59.130 tell the team a little bit of the history of where we've come from, how 283 00:23:59.130 --> 00:24:04.120 we make decisions and informs them on, hey, how I might use my own creativity 284 00:24:04.120 --> 00:24:08.480 to create that great brand experience. So we tell stories, you know, 285 00:24:08.490 --> 00:24:13.100 throughout the day, every all hands, every team meeting. And I think uh, 286 00:24:13.110 --> 00:24:16.660 those of us as marketers can be really, should be really conscious about what 287 00:24:16.660 --> 00:24:20.560 are the stories that we're telling to our teams and how can those keep us 288 00:24:20.560 --> 00:24:25.600 connected? No matter where we are in the world? Wow. Well I think isn't that 289 00:24:25.600 --> 00:24:30.240 so true that catching a vision for something and you, you can just be all 290 00:24:30.240 --> 00:24:35.130 in. And I think that makes me think of like, like kind of a, you know, a silly 291 00:24:35.130 --> 00:24:38.720 example, but like falling in love, you catch a vision of what your life could 292 00:24:38.720 --> 00:24:42.370 be like. And I'm obviously just been making analogies to what you're saying 293 00:24:42.370 --> 00:24:46.670 two things, but I think that isn't that so funny that the things that work in 294 00:24:46.680 --> 00:24:52.460 all as other aspects of human life also work in business. And I love that, I 295 00:24:52.460 --> 00:24:59.690 love that you're sharing with your team what the brand of Asana is by including 296 00:24:59.690 --> 00:25:03.790 them in it. Yeah, it's not the colours of the fonts or what you can and can't 297 00:25:03.790 --> 00:25:07.220 do with the logo is these experiences and the best way to communicate that is 298 00:25:07.220 --> 00:25:12.400 her story. There's another technique that we use on the team that was kind 299 00:25:12.400 --> 00:25:18.250 of an old technique is pioneered by by I believe it was abc sports, uh this 300 00:25:18.250 --> 00:25:23.900 this tv producer named Room, and I think it's really relevant to uh to us 301 00:25:23.900 --> 00:25:27.770 as marketers operating really cross functional and distributed environment. 302 00:25:28.440 --> 00:25:34.450 What room was doing in the 70's was they were starting to broadcast local 303 00:25:34.450 --> 00:25:39.040 sports events to a national audience. And you can imagine when they started 304 00:25:39.040 --> 00:25:43.390 doing this, they found that, hey, people outside those immediate cities 305 00:25:43.390 --> 00:25:48.400 where the events are, nobody cared, nobody cared about, nobody on the coast 306 00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:53.030 cared about what some midwestern baseball team was doing. And what he 307 00:25:53.030 --> 00:25:59.460 did was really insightful was the pregame story or the pre event story. 308 00:25:59.940 --> 00:26:04.200 He'd produce a little segment that would just show what's at stakes, 309 00:26:04.210 --> 00:26:08.650 what's at stake in today's game. What's the history of these two teams? Why is 310 00:26:08.650 --> 00:26:14.130 this so important? What, what can we expect from the, from this and why you 311 00:26:14.130 --> 00:26:18.600 should care. And the olympics are coming up and, you know, we're going to 312 00:26:18.600 --> 00:26:23.460 see these across the board, why kayaking and skateboarding and all 313 00:26:23.460 --> 00:26:27.670 these new sports that nobody cares about. They're they're gonna they're 314 00:26:27.670 --> 00:26:30.560 gonna in tv, they're gonna, they're gonna tell a story that makes us care. 315 00:26:31.140 --> 00:26:33.660 And I think this is really important for us as marketers. When we are 316 00:26:33.660 --> 00:26:37.210 working with our sales colleagues, we're working with our product 317 00:26:37.210 --> 00:26:41.010 colleagues, they're not sitting there thinking about what we think about all 318 00:26:41.010 --> 00:26:45.310 day long. So if we're going to go in and present a new strategy, we're going 319 00:26:45.310 --> 00:26:49.280 to present a new sales deck or we're going to share a new piece of data 320 00:26:49.280 --> 00:26:54.810 science that discovered the results of an A. B. Test. We need to give the 321 00:26:54.810 --> 00:27:00.280 pregame story. We need to tell that audience why this matters why what we 322 00:27:00.280 --> 00:27:04.650 found was so unexpected, why it's so interesting and why you should care why 323 00:27:04.650 --> 00:27:08.950 you should listen. And so with all of our team members, when they are sharing 324 00:27:08.950 --> 00:27:12.340 something big and new, we always ask what's the pregame story, It may just 325 00:27:12.340 --> 00:27:18.630 be a little 32nd preamble, but it really gets people vested in what we 326 00:27:18.630 --> 00:27:23.110 have to share. And as marketers that helps us move from kind of managing the 327 00:27:23.110 --> 00:27:26.410 work to really leading and inspiring and getting, getting our cross 328 00:27:26.410 --> 00:27:31.930 functional partners engaged. Oh wow, what is the pregame story? Oh my gosh, 329 00:27:31.940 --> 00:27:37.590 that's awesome. That can make anything wonderful and worth pursuing too. And 330 00:27:37.590 --> 00:27:40.580 like you're saying local sports, you hear somebody's story and all of a 331 00:27:40.580 --> 00:27:45.720 sudden you're just so you're just rooting for them. You find yourself 332 00:27:45.720 --> 00:27:50.120 watching, you know, a Wichita state game, you have never been to Kansas and 333 00:27:50.120 --> 00:27:54.560 you're like, I cannot get away from, I have to see the outcome of this game. 334 00:27:54.640 --> 00:28:00.240 So I will be watching the olympics mostly for the brilliant storytelling 335 00:28:00.240 --> 00:28:04.550 that all these people produce and I'm sure Whitewater kayaking is going to 336 00:28:04.550 --> 00:28:10.250 have the riveted, Oh my gosh, I love it. Well, if you find yourself in the 337 00:28:10.250 --> 00:28:14.150 market for a whitewater kayak then you know, it's worked. If all of a sudden 338 00:28:14.150 --> 00:28:19.040 you're thinking about right, that's right. Oh, another part of the art, you 339 00:28:19.040 --> 00:28:22.600 know that I think we have been discovering on the team is bringing 340 00:28:22.600 --> 00:28:27.510 some of those pandemic rituals back to the office. We are returning our teams 341 00:28:27.510 --> 00:28:32.490 returning to the office in a we call an office centric hybrid. Most people 342 00:28:32.490 --> 00:28:35.580 spend about three days a week in the office and then a couple days kind of 343 00:28:35.580 --> 00:28:41.260 working from wherever we pioneered all these great rituals during the pandemic. 344 00:28:41.270 --> 00:28:47.610 That it would be ashamed to leave those behind. One for us has been, We have a 345 00:28:47.620 --> 00:28:52.320 little weekly stand up with the whole, the whole team across uh four now, five 346 00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:58.770 continents and it is the most action packed fun. 25 minutes of my work week. 347 00:28:59.340 --> 00:29:04.480 It starts with music. It's got our community team running a little 348 00:29:04.490 --> 00:29:09.360 icebreaker. We welcome all of our new hires. There's some compelling guest 349 00:29:09.360 --> 00:29:14.360 speaker and then like an update on our goals and our key metrics and it is fun. 350 00:29:14.360 --> 00:29:20.670 I mean the chat is exploding with with comments and the energy and the music. 351 00:29:20.670 --> 00:29:25.590 And so when we come back to the office, we are bringing that ritual back with 352 00:29:25.590 --> 00:29:30.370 us and we'll never go back. What have you found that? That the hybrid, the 353 00:29:30.370 --> 00:29:36.200 hybrid model just kind of going on a tangent here works well with preserving 354 00:29:36.200 --> 00:29:40.690 some of the flexibility that comes with that has come with the pandemic and one 355 00:29:40.690 --> 00:29:44.940 of the, you know, silver linings that has come with it, but also like making 356 00:29:44.940 --> 00:29:51.180 sure that people aren't siloed and isolated. Yeah, this is where I'm just 357 00:29:51.180 --> 00:29:54.720 really excited for the next 18 months where I think there's going to be all 358 00:29:54.720 --> 00:30:00.640 kinds of experimentation on new models. We are starting with, like I said about 359 00:30:00.640 --> 00:30:06.290 three days per week in the office. We still believe in that synchronous being 360 00:30:06.290 --> 00:30:10.880 on a shared whiteboard. You no idea waiting on ideas and then having a 361 00:30:10.880 --> 00:30:15.730 couple of days a week where it is that deep focused work. But gosh, there's 362 00:30:15.730 --> 00:30:20.560 going to be every uh incarnation in between and I think it's gonna be 363 00:30:20.560 --> 00:30:24.570 really cool to see, you know, see what works we're going to iterate on it. I 364 00:30:24.570 --> 00:30:29.060 think the key thing though is that teams need any clarity and they need 365 00:30:29.060 --> 00:30:34.420 connection and there's lots of ways to create that. But those things, no 366 00:30:34.420 --> 00:30:39.410 matter what model people adapt, it's like how do we create that clarity so 367 00:30:39.410 --> 00:30:43.200 that we can be macro managers, we can feel engaged in the work and how do we 368 00:30:43.200 --> 00:30:47.430 have these rituals in these stories where we feel connected to the tribe to 369 00:30:47.430 --> 00:30:53.130 the team and so we don't feel like we're stuck at home isolated in our 370 00:30:53.140 --> 00:30:59.090 bedrooms, not working on something bigger than ourselves. Absolutely. I'm 371 00:30:59.090 --> 00:31:04.800 curious about the trust that comes to with having these hybrid models, but 372 00:31:04.800 --> 00:31:11.000 also in allowing people to as the head of a team. You know, allowing people, 373 00:31:11.010 --> 00:31:16.200 do you have like a little golden rule or anything like that? For for being in 374 00:31:16.200 --> 00:31:20.690 this remote style of managing? Yeah. Gosh. I have learned so much over the 375 00:31:20.690 --> 00:31:25.080 past 18 months. A lot of how things I have done in the past have there were 376 00:31:25.080 --> 00:31:30.050 strongly held beliefs I have not revisited. So one of those was I really 377 00:31:30.050 --> 00:31:35.600 value, I always wanted to spend a lot of personal time in person to really 378 00:31:35.600 --> 00:31:39.440 get to know and you know, to get to know people on a personal level and I 379 00:31:39.440 --> 00:31:44.540 would travel a lot to our different offices and I just had that core belief 380 00:31:44.540 --> 00:31:48.990 of, hey, building trust and relationship takes a lot of time and it 381 00:31:48.990 --> 00:31:54.360 is true. It does. However, it turns out you can just ask people all these 382 00:31:54.360 --> 00:31:57.910 things that you thought used to take months and years, things like, hey, 383 00:31:57.910 --> 00:32:01.020 what do they value? How do they like to be recognized? What are their 384 00:32:01.020 --> 00:32:05.830 preferences turns out you can just ask them up front. And so one of my 385 00:32:05.830 --> 00:32:10.330 teammates created this great entrance interview. When people join the team, 386 00:32:10.330 --> 00:32:14.400 they fill out this whole questionnaire of foods, they like drinks, they like 387 00:32:14.400 --> 00:32:19.470 how they like to be recognized. Another team member created a we call them kind 388 00:32:19.470 --> 00:32:23.250 of re entry interviews where there's a bunch of questions to just ask your 389 00:32:23.250 --> 00:32:28.100 direct reports on a regular basis. Hey, when have you felt most fulfilled in 390 00:32:28.100 --> 00:32:31.090 the work? When was the last time you thought about quitting? Because you 391 00:32:31.090 --> 00:32:34.740 were so frustrated? What would get you so excited about the work? What would 392 00:32:34.750 --> 00:32:37.800 encourage you to consider a job outside the company? These things that we 393 00:32:37.800 --> 00:32:42.050 previously thought were taboo and had to be built over many years of trust. 394 00:32:42.140 --> 00:32:45.090 Now we just put them in a task and a questionnaire and we give it to 395 00:32:45.090 --> 00:32:49.500 everybody and people love it. They love to to know that their their voices 396 00:32:49.500 --> 00:32:53.590 heard and it creates those special opportunity for us to create moments of 397 00:32:53.590 --> 00:32:59.150 delight with with the team. So don't don't assume, just ask. Well I love 398 00:32:59.150 --> 00:33:03.650 that Dave if there were there were just some key bullet points you'd want 399 00:33:03.650 --> 00:33:08.530 people to take away implement or try out from this episode, what would they 400 00:33:08.530 --> 00:33:13.780 be? Well, I love the craft of marketing. I think it's I think it's just one of 401 00:33:13.780 --> 00:33:17.750 most noble, one of the coolest professions out there. We spend so much 402 00:33:17.750 --> 00:33:21.210 time talking about the marketing that we deliver to our customers in our 403 00:33:21.210 --> 00:33:23.890 audience and sometimes we don't spend enough time thinking about the health 404 00:33:23.890 --> 00:33:27.940 of the team. So I think kind of key things are right now. Knowledge workers 405 00:33:27.940 --> 00:33:31.800 and particularly marketers are languishing times are tough and we need 406 00:33:31.800 --> 00:33:35.890 to be sober to that reality as marketers as leaders. There's a lot 407 00:33:35.890 --> 00:33:40.090 that we can do to create clarity, to create connection something that I've 408 00:33:40.090 --> 00:33:44.660 been working for us or the art and science. Um, so I think let's see to 409 00:33:44.660 --> 00:33:48.840 recap a few of the big things. One is goals, not just the team goals, but 410 00:33:48.840 --> 00:33:52.780 really enlisting each individual in creating their uncles that they feel 411 00:33:52.780 --> 00:33:57.400 really bought into Two. Is product is all those workflows like that. That is 412 00:33:57.400 --> 00:34:04.760 the biggest soul sucking source of frustration is just that having to, the 413 00:34:04.770 --> 00:34:09.840 work we do to just coordinate all that can be Product ized assad is a great 414 00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:13.429 tool to do that, but there's lots of other ways you can do it as well. Um 415 00:34:13.440 --> 00:34:18.489 Product is those workflows, engineer, calendar for focus and flow. You need 416 00:34:18.489 --> 00:34:23.219 those work blocks don't buy into the myth of multitasking and mistaking 417 00:34:23.230 --> 00:34:28.810 productivity for activity. And then lastly, let's use those superpowers as 418 00:34:28.810 --> 00:34:33.460 marketers to create connections on our team. And chief among those is the 419 00:34:33.460 --> 00:34:38.489 power of storytelling and what are the stories that we're creating and telling 420 00:34:38.489 --> 00:34:44.130 and how can that compel us to having a team that can go create the best market 421 00:34:44.130 --> 00:34:49.550 impossible for uh for our communities. Oh my goodness! Well this has been so 422 00:34:49.550 --> 00:34:53.820 informative. I'm so excited by what you guys are doing over at santa susana. My 423 00:34:53.820 --> 00:34:58.340 opinion is that to know asana is to love asana and I'm so thrilled that we 424 00:34:58.340 --> 00:35:02.060 got to chat today. Thank you so much for joining me on B two B growth. 425 00:35:02.070 --> 00:35:04.760 Thanks so much for having me. Olivia. Really enjoyed it. 426 00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:07.350 Mhm. Mhm mm. 427 00:35:08.940 --> 00:35:14.180 Yeah. Is the decision maker for your product or service at BBB marketer? Are 428 00:35:14.180 --> 00:35:17.600 you looking to reach those buyers through the medium of podcasting? 429 00:35:17.610 --> 00:35:22.860 Considered becoming a co host of GDP growth. This show is consistently 430 00:35:22.860 --> 00:35:26.970 ranked as a top 100 podcast in the marketing category of apple podcasts 431 00:35:27.040 --> 00:35:32.300 And the show gets more than 130,000 downloads each month. We've already 432 00:35:32.300 --> 00:35:35.870 done the work of building the audience so you can focus on delivering 433 00:35:35.880 --> 00:35:40.880 incredible content to our listeners if you're interested, email Logan at Sweet 434 00:35:40.880 --> 00:35:41.970 Fish Media dot com.