Using Asana to reduce (or eliminate) meetings [VIDEO]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCkxETZRodE&w=560&h=315]

Ah, meetings, we love and we loathe them. On the one hand, meetings make us feel good because you feel productive and important. On the other hand, they're usually a massive waste of time because they're unstructured and things we said we'd do in the meeting usually don't get done.

Enter Asana! In the video below, I share some tips for using Asana to reduce and eliminate meetings altogether. And, when you do need to have a meeting, Asana can be used to keep everyone on track and putting meeting notes into action.

Using Asana to reduce meetings

Meetings are often used to get clarity on how a team is going or where a project is at right now. There are a few key ways that Asana can be used to reduce the need for this type of meeting:

  1. Instead of having a meeting to “catch up” or have a one-on-one with someone, you can simply look at the other person's My Tasks to see what's currently being worked on.
  2. Project managers can use the Progress tab to update everyone on a project's progress. By writing a few sentences about what's going well and obstacles that are holding the project back, the team can chip in with suggestions and be kept in the look without the need to hold a “Project status” meeting.
  3. Team members should only meet to plan the project next steps and high-level goals. More tactical stuff like “Can you do this?” should be discussed in Asana via the comments.

How to run better meetings with Asana

When you decide that a meeting is justified, you can use Asana to keep the meeting on track and log important action items. There are a few ways you can do this (watch my video for a demonstration of each one):

  1. Project or Team Conversations – A quick and easy way to run a meeting is to use the Conversations area of a project or team to keep your meeting notes. During the meeting, you can add new tasks to a project as you go to record what everyone needs to do.
  2. Meeting Project Template – Asana comes with a pre-built template with sections for the agenda and action items so you can clearly plan and run your meeting. This is okay, but it can result in a lot of projects cluttering up your sidebar.
  3. Meetings as Tasks – Instead, I prefer to plan and run meetings using a task template. The task can be added to the necessary project so the meeting notes are recorded in the right place. Within the task, you can use subtasks to plan the agenda before the meeting. If you add followers to the task, you can encourage other people to add to the agenda as well. During the meeting, you can add new subtasks to set up action items. You can take this a step further by adding the subtask to any necessary projects so the meeting tasks are clearly visible within the grand scheme of things.

To get a free 30-day trial on Asana Premium or Business (even if you're an existing customer), you can use my partner link: https://paulm.in/2BFvAvR

Need help with Asana? View my consulting options to see how I can help.

Please let me know if you have any questions about using Asana's for running your meetings!

What do the lessons cover?

When you purchase, you’ll get access to the following lessons via your customer account. This is a “go at your own pace” program where you’re free to view the lessons whenever you like:

MODULE 1: PLANNING YOUR PIPEDRIVE STRATEGY

  • 1.1: Introduction (4:10)
  • 1.2: Your Pipedrive vision and purpose (4:12)
  • 1.3: Planning your Pipedrive tech stack (8:50)

MODULE 2: SETTING UP YOUR PIPEDRIVE ACCOUNT

  • 2.1: Organisations, contacts, deals & leads (15:01)
  • 2.2: Setting up your pipeline(s) (28:24)
  • 2.3: Labels, data fields and products (42:40)
  • 2.4: Activities and lost reasons (14:01)
  • 2.5: Importing data from a CSV file (10:46)
  • 2.6: Using filters to find information (10:26)
  • 2.7: How to bulk update information (7:11)
  • 2.8: Setting up sales goals (16.02)
  • 2.9: Project management in Pipedrive (30:43)

MODULE 3: TEAM ONBOARDING

  • 3.1: Planning your Pipedrive rollout (10:13)
  • 3.2: Define protocols and best practices (12:53)
  • 3.3: User permissions, visibility and teams (17:17)
  • 3.4: Training your team (recommended agenda) (8:49)

More videos coming soon… (Last Updated: November-2024)

MODULE 4: USING PIPEDRIVE ON A DAILY BASIS

  • 4.1: Using leads, contacts vs. deals (12:28)
  • 4.2: Activities, automation and calendar sync (20:10)
  • 4.3: Scheduling appointments with Pipedrive or Calendly (13:10)
  • 4.4: Email integration, templates, automation and bulk messaging (36:09)
  • 4.5: Calling via JustCall and the Pipedrive mobile app (14:05)
  • 4.6: Insights, dashboards and reports (21:18)
  • 4.7 Revenue forecasting, payment instalments and subscriptions (18:20)
  • 4.8: Creating Smart Documents in Pipedrive (12:17)
  • 4.9: Automating your sales process with Workflow Automation (24:29)
  • 4.10: Sending email campaigns (24:51)

MODULE 5: INTEGRATIONS & AUTOMATION

  • 5.1: Create new contacts and deals with Zapier (18:45)
  • 5.2: Adding contacts to a newsletter or drip campaign (18:42)
  • 5.3: Posting Pipedrive updates to Slack (6:43)
  • 5.4: Auto-generate proposals and quotes with Pandadoc (9:35)
  • 5.5: Auto-generate contracts with Webmerge (13:25)
  • 5.6: Invoicing via Quickbooks or Xero (8:06)
  • 5.7: Using LeadBooster to get more leads (15:28)
  • 5.8: Linking Pipedrive to a project management system (13:23)
  • 5.9: My booking system and email automation explained (23:25)

What do the lessons cover?

When you purchase, you’ll get access to the following lessons via your customer account. This is a “go at your own pace” program where you’re free to view the lessons whenever you like:

MODULE 1: PLANNING YOUR ASANA STRATEGY

  • 1.1: Introduction (4:28)
  • 1.2: Your Asana vision and purpose (13:23)
  • 1.3: Planning your Asana structure (17:31)
  • 1.4: Members vs. Guests (5:39)
  • 1.5: The Pyramid of Clarity (4:39)

MODULE 2: SETTING UP YOUR ASANA ACCOUNT

  • 2.1: Setting up a project (42:00)
  • 2.2: Using workflows, custom fields, rules, tags & forms (44:16)
  • 2.3: Should you use projects or tasks? (e.g. clients, events) (16:10)
  • 2.4: Importing tasks from a CSV (4:38)
  • 2.5: Seeing the big picture with Portfolios & Workload (19:24)
  • 2.6: Creating project and task templates (35:52)
  • 2.7: How to manage meetings (15:10)
  • 2.8: How to move projects between accounts (7:22)
  • 2.9: Planning your goals in Asana (24:40)

MODULE 3: TEAM ONBOARDING

  • 3.1: Planning your Asana rollout (10:23)
  • 3.2: Define protocols and best practices (22:41)
  • 3.3: Training your team (recommended agenda) (8:33)
  • 3.4: Improving the success of adoption (4:37)
  • 3.5: Customize your onboarding process (10:33)

MODULE 4: USING ASANA ON A DAILY BASIS

  • 4.1: Use ‘My Tasks’ to plan your day (17:09)
  • 4.2: How to communicate in Asana (14:00)
  • 4.3: Checking the inbox (9:19)
  • 4.4: Sharing project status updates (7:36)
  • 4.5: How to use Asana and Slack (9:45)
  • 4.6: Keyboard shortcuts (4:16)
  • 4.7: Filtering tasks with advanced search (5:49)
  • 4.8: How to manage approvals in Asana (4:25)
  • 4.9: Best practices for assigning a task to a colleague or VA (8:38)
  • 4.10: Daily habits every Asana user should follow (8:29)

MODULE 5: ADVANCED TRAINING AND AUTOMATION

  • 5.1: How to create projects with subsections (8:37)
  • 5.2: Automating tasks with Zapier (19:12)
  • 5.3: Time tracking options (30:33)
  • 5.4: Creating a client-facing project (5:26)
  • 5.5: Multi-homing tasks into multiple projects (10:41)
  • 5.6: Creating reports in Asana (14:33)
  • 5.7: Creating automated checklists with rules (5:21)

More videos coming soon… (Last updated: June-2024)