Over the past few years, we have seen many companies make efforts to digitise the way they work. However, in too many cases, there is still a sense of disorder: tasks that are duplicated (“Wasn’t that what you were working on?”), information that gets lost (“We discussed it in that daily meeting, don’t you remember?”), and teams that need to meet more often than they would like just to understand the current status of the work.
This is not accidental; in fact, there is a clear explanation. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, employees spend 48% of their time sending emails, searching for information, and coordinating with the rest of the team. This means that most of the effort is not focused on creating value, but on trying to organise it.
The problem, therefore, is not technological but structural. Does this sound familiar?
What many organisations have not yet fully resolved is a third essential layer in their work system. They have invested in communication tools (Teams, Slack, email…), in content platforms (SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox…), but the most important question remains: how do we coordinate all of this?
This is where Asana can play a distinctive role, provided its function within the system is properly understood.
Implementing Asana
Asana is not, or should not be, simply another task management platform. Its value lies in acting as a coordination layer that connects work across all levels of the organisation. Through its data model, the well-known Work Graph, individual tasks are linked to projects, milestones, and strategic objectives, creating a complete and up-to-date view of work in real time. This ability to connect information is key, as it transforms the tool into more than a repository: it becomes an operating system for daily work.
Although this may sound good on paper, in practice, implementing Asana requires changing how day-to-day activities are organised.
Consider a retail company managing marketing campaigns across multiple countries. Before redesigning its work system, each team operated with its own tools: spreadsheets for planning, emails for coordination, and shared documents for content. The result was a constant lack of visibility, especially for leadership roles, which relied on manual reports to make decisions.
When Asana was introduced without proper training and design, the situation barely improved. The tool became just another place to record tasks, but the work continued happening elsewhere. It truly started generating value later, when the organisation realised it needed to clearly define its workflow—from request intake to execution and reporting—and when the entire team was trained to take advantage of the tool’s capabilities and automations.
This example illustrates one of the most common mistakes in digital transformation processes: implementing tools without first reviewing the work system. When this happens, the issue is not the technology, but the lack of an organisational design to support it.
From Tool to Work System
With the above in mind, Asana is flexible enough to adapt to almost any type of organisation. From marketing teams to operations, product, IT, administration, human resources, or consulting—the tool itself does not change, but how the work is structured within it does.
When work is properly reflected in Asana, there is no longer a need to request constant updates, hold numerous meetings, or reconstruct scattered information. The tool becomes a living space where everything is efficiently connected.
Only a few basic conditions are needed for Asana to start delivering value quickly:
- There is some clarity about how the workflow operates, even if it is not yet fully optimised.
- Teams are willing to centralise information in a single place, ideally starting with one team and scaling gradually.
- There are clear task owners.
- There is a desire to reduce reliance on emails, meetings, and manual follow-ups.
Therefore, rather than asking whether Asana “works,” the more relevant question is:
Is your organisation ready to work with greater clarity?
At Volcanic, we have an expert team that can accelerate this process for you.
Laura Fernández. IT Consultant and Asana Ambassador