Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

My KonMari journey began a few months into the pandemic. I picked up Kondo’s definitive work about tidying up out of boredom. I admit I was surprised at how quickly her ideas resonated. It might have been the rut I was in because of lockdown and working from home, but I was immediately following the steps religiously at home. During a period of excessive time indoors, her process brought much-needed peace and joy to my home. Work was a different story, though.

Burnout is not a feeling. Burnout is a physiological and neurological condition that can take months to develop and months to undo. Throughout the working world, both burnout and imposter syndrome are pervasive: Asana’s Anatomy of Work research has found that seven in 10 knowledge workers experienced either burnout or imposter syndrome in the last year, with an average of 42% experiencing both. These data suggest that the root causes of burnout and imposter syndrome may be linked.

Great things happen when teams see the value of their work. But often, strategic initiatives are disconnected from day-to-day projects, leaving employees uncertain about their top priorities. According to the 2022 Anatomy of Work Index, nearly 1 in 3 employees can’t see a clear link between their day-to-day efforts and their company’s goals. To fulfill an organization’s mission and be effective, teams must have clarity about their goals and what’s needed to achieve them.

If you work from home, you’ve faced this dilemma: You want to show face during a video meeting to signal engagement with your job, but video meeting stress is the unavoidable consequence when you go on camera. It’s been more than two years since millions started working from home, and by this point, we’re all tired of seeing our own faces.

When you’re driving change to your stakeholders—be it the executive team, your employees, the board, or even the customers—the situation comes with its own gravitational force. “You have every opportunity to lose trust and to see it erode. So being genuine and getting it right really matters,” Anna Binder, Asana’s Head of People, explains to me in her matter-of-fact style during a recent phone call.

Erica Dhawan, the author and business consultant, is surrounded by cardboard moving boxes. Among the items she unpacked first were a bookshelf, a big plant, a ring light, a tripod, and a 4K video camera. For Mrs. Dhawan, settling in after a move from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Florida began by first unboxing these workplace essentials. (Her discussion with Asana was sandwiched between virtual keynotes for an investment firm and a technology company.)

At Asana, we’re all about helping teams maintain focus and alignment. That includes streamlining collaboration across applications. It’s no secret that juggling multiple tools slows down productivity. According to the 2022 Anatomy of Work Index, knowledge workers switch between 9 apps per day, leading to a heavy distraction tax. Luckily, there are ways to combat this digital overload.

A new study has revealed findings that every leader of a large company should know. Why should every executive know about this new bit of research? The findings are essential for company leaders who want their organization to move with agility and focus because when valuable data, contacts, or best practices are locked away in a silo, information sharing can’t happen, and neither can doing more with less.