No matter where your team works, whether remotely or all together in an office, building a culture of accountability is key to hitting your goals and keeping projects on track. Teammates want to know that they can rely on each other to jump in and collaborate on projects, and managers want to know that individual contributors can meet deadlines and expectations without being micromanaged. At the heart of accountability is communication and transparency. When teams communicate frequently and openly, their responsibilities become clearer and they’re able to deliver on agreements more easily.
Teamwok helps teams build accountability by providing clarity into who is doing what by when, for every piece of work, on one central platform. Here are the top 10 features we recommend for creating your own culture of accountability, from anywhere.
For team members
Stay connected with Inbox
Unlike your email inbox, which often feels more cluttered than convenient, your Asana Inbox is your friend. There’s no junk mail here. Instead, Inbox is your one stop shop for coordinating work and responding to requests across your entire team. When managed correctly, it can help you build a whole lot of accountability with relatively low effort.
Teammate @mention you in a comment for help? Reply to them from your Inbox. New tasks added to a project you’re working on? Assign a due date, add collaborators, or change the description from your Inbox. Status of a deliverable changed from “Not started” to “Reviewing”? Show an appreciation or create a follow-up task for yourself to check in with that teammate later—again right from your Inbox. You can find more ideas for how to use your Inbox like a pro, with our top five tips for managing your Inbox.
For team leads
Monitor all your team's work at a glance with portfolio
As a team lead or manager, you’re likely responsible for multiple people each working on multiple projects with many multiple associated tasks and Milestones. Time spent keeping tabs on every project and ensuring team members are staying accountable adds up—quickly.
With Portfolios, you can get a bird’s-eye view of all your team’s projects and initiatives all in one place. A quick scan will let you know which projects are on track, which are in danger of falling behind schedule, and when the latest status update was communicated. From there, you can drill down into upcoming or overdue tasks and follow-up with your team to keep work moving in the right direction, without micromanaging everything (or everyone) else.
Orchestrate complex project plans with Timeline
When coordinating large-scale or even just long-term projects with your team, staying accountable to deadlines is critical. Timeline is a Gantt chart-style view you can use to see how work fits together and build entire project plans complete with assignees, due dates, and dependencies. When priorities shift, just drag and drop tasks along the timeline to get your team back on track or create Rules to automatically adjust the due date of dependent tasks for you. Either way, you’re keeping everyone accountable and up-to-date on the latest workback timelines so you can deliver work on time, every time.
