Angeli is the Founder and COO at Workast. Her team ensures our users have an exceptional customer experience with Workast and takes care of all user issues.
There’s a popular new method of creating order out of chaos. Organized drawers to see and find what you’re looking for. There is a place for everything, and everything’s in its place. Wouldn’t it be great if something like that could apply to your job’s production schedule too?
Basically, you need a way to “Marie Kondo” your workspace. And you can…mostly.
In Brendon’s case, while each project might not always spark joy, he *can* manage multiple products and departments, categorize projects, tidy to-do lists, and view them all in a neat orderly manner creating a more productive and harmonious team environment.
And that in itself is downright joyful.
Distributed Meditation Technology manufactures and markets multiple holistic health care products in the United States. Using omni-channel brand management, coupled with their own manufacturing facilities, they are able to manage products directly from inception to consumer.
And for Brendon Hoover, their Director of Operations and Production Manager, that means meticulously managing every task so that nothing is ever left unfolded, er, unfinished. He oversees everything from day-to-day staffing to the manufacturing of their products, processing orders and setting up distribution supply chains, working with suppliers and vendors, and managing tight deadlines for production schedules.
Originally they were using Wunderlist to manage projects and tasks until an announcement that further development for that software was no longer going to be supported. So his CEO began the hunt for a new solution and ultimately decided to give Workast a test drive.
Brendon was an early adopter and quickly became a full-time user and advocate for his company’s use of the application. It wasn’t long before the entire company was transitioned over and using it full time. And it quickly became a company life-saver.
Nothing is more terrifying than a last-minute unscheduled project that spans every facet of your company.
According to Brendon, “the clutch” that solidified his commitment to Workast came in the beginning of the transition when they were suddenly tasked with the production of an agricultural product that needed to be manufactured at a new facility. It was beyond stressful.
“All of these ideas poured out for this project from every corner and I just needed to find a way to organize it all…or fail. There is no way we could have managed this on paper.”
He was able to create workspaces to exactly mirror his Slack communication channels for the “20,000 ft view” components, each a behemoth in and of itself: 1) Build out a facility; 2) Manufacture the product; 3) Package and Distribute the product; 4) Manage the budget constraints
“Once I had the hierarchy of the workspace, tasks, and subtasks in place, I could assign duties and due dates, basically rallying the entire team to get this job done. And Bam — [we were] able to get it done! Now, we use it for absolutely everything.”
“Workast is like extra brain space.”
Today, Brendon checks Workast about twice an hour. It’s the first and last thing he does at work and he says it keeps him on point with the past, due now, and future action items. Ironically, he points out that there are sixteen daily tasks he looks at to do his job properly, and the first is: “Go over Workast.”
He loves the ability to respond quickly as priorities pop up, often out of nowhere, and credits Workast with allowing them to keep tabs and not drop the ball. Two-click integration with Slack means that they can communicate, create, assign, and prioritize to-do lists in a blink, a type of virtual organization Marie Kondo herself would envy.
“I could see the direction Workast was headed in and was totally bought in. I began using it in the early days and was quickly impressed that they were actually responsive to receiving and implementing user feature requests. For example, the ability to create subtasks or have attachments in to-do lists wasn’t possible at the time, but was implemented fairly quickly. These are invaluable to us now.”
Brendon claims that everyone always calls him a complainer, but he identifies more as the person who finds what can be improved upon.
How would he improve upon Workast? Even MORE organization of course (that is the theme of the day after all). His happy place would be the ability to create a deeper hierarchy of sub-subtasks under subtasks and a nice and tidy Gantt Chart to view them all in. Like his own KonMari cabinet with a see through door.
And while Workast isn’t able to help Brendon figure out which 30 books he should or shouldn’t keep, many of his “feature wish list” items are noted to be on the developers’ wishlists as well.
Do you have any relatable anecdotes or amusing Marie Kondo-esque comparisons for how you manage your work? Shoot a tweet to @workast with the hashtag #workastkondo.
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