This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Now Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage startups with content and traction called End Game.
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
I was helping a friend the last few weeks think through a business he has started and it reminded me of just how much value the ‘everything is a task’ method provides in these early stages.
I would ask him what he has already done and everything was anecdotes like “Oh yes we tried that a couple months back but it didn’t really work.”
And i’d dig in to find out why it didn’t work… and you’d find out that a very minimal effort was done and could have easily been iterated on. Yet he’d written off that entire channel as a result.
Without documenting anything of course.
And so he was moving from one channel to the next, one idea to the next, without ever doing anything rigorously and systematically trying to improve it.
This to me is like shooting from the hip with a handgun at a target that is 100 meters away. You are extremely unlikely to hit anything. And if you do it’s only with complete luck.
Things are just too competitive in most niches these days to take this kind of approach.
So we started going through the exercise of creating tasks for the things that he’d done and the things that he planned to do.
As we did overlaps and inconsistencies began to arise, which I would raise. eg. “Why are you going to do this activity if it is predicated on this other process that still does not work?”
These are the mistakes i see time and again when you make decisions at a superficial level without documenting the process.
How do you avoid making decisions at a superficial level? Simple. You create a task for all activities and you actually think through each task and write down what it actually means.
As you do this… my experience is that these inconsistencies often pop up and the alarm bell goes of… “Why am I doing this task? It doesn’t make sense.”
And yet… if you hadn’t actually written out what the task is.. there is a pretty good chance you would have assigned someone and spent money on it. Money that would have gone straight down the drain.
What is the “Everything is a Task” method?
Basically it means that everything that takes more than 10-20 minutes should be documented as a task. And since I use Clickup (the project management tool), I am referring to a Clickup task.
What are the components of a task?
- Title (of the task)
- Assignee: who will do it?
- Due date: If the task is started… put the target completion date. Keep it updated.
- Context: Why are we doing it? (written in a way anyone can understand)
- Goal: The definition of done for the task so that it has a clear scope
- Followers: Whoever should get notifications and stay abreast of it
It takes me about one minute to write out a task with all of these components.
So it’s fast and I don’t accept any excuses from team members that it “takes too long” or is a “waste of time.”
Many of the folks that have given this feedback over the last few years were consistently inconsistent about their ability to execute.
But because of the intransparency around just how little they were actually getting done, they continue thinking that it is ok. And that they are ‘good’.
Till they work with me. Then i set the record straight. lol
Benefit 1: You think things through much better
When you use this method, it forces you to write out everything you are going to do. Which is an extremely valuable exercise because it forces you to actually think through the things you are going to do.
When I do this thought process… all kinds of new ideas pop up.
I ‘discover’ tasks that I should probably do beforehand as they’re higher priority. Or I realize I shouldn’t do certain tasks because of dependencies that I hadn’t thought about.
Once you have done this process you also now have a great framework for prioritisation. Because one you’ve written everything out… it is a lot easier to prioritise than if everything is just in your head.
I generally use kanbans by team so that each team has it very clear what the priorities are and what stage of completion every task is.
Benefit 2: Everything is far more transparent, and thus coordinated
The next benefit of doing things this way is the level of transparency it brings. While there is only a single assignee for doing the task, you are adding as followers anyone that should stay in the ‘know’.
These folks get notifications each time the task is updated and can comment if they choose.
But this single thing avoids a ton of useless slack message updates.
I remember I had one client where i came in and everyone was using Slack for almost everything. I’d ask where the decision was made for something and I’d be told I need to search for some slack thread several weeks ago.
I considered it a big mess and moved everything to Clickup.
A couple months of re-inforcing the Clickup process with the team… and things started to work so much faster and cleaner. Plus you could almost hear crickets on Slack as it was barely used anymore.
Slack was relegated to only impromptu emergency items. Because everything was on Clickup.
And rather than a big mess of unstructured Slack channels… all conversations were occuring within tasks that were organized into a tree-like, logical structure of folders and lists. Making it easy to find any conversation on any topic with a couple clicks.
Benefit 3: Results of team members are much more transparent
The other thing I love about this is how it becomes very clear what everyone has achieved each week. This would always frustrate me a lot with the way I used to manage teams years ago.
I’d do a weekly one-on-one with someone and they would give me an update. I would question why so little was achieved and i’d get some vague answer about how certain things took a lot more time than expected.
Or i’d perhaps be told that they were blocked on something… and i’d ask why they hadn’t let me know earlier.
This pretty much never happens anymore. And if it does I typically consider it my fault, not their’s.
Because everything everyone is doing is documented as a task with a status. I literally know what everyone is doing.
And if they comment on something that isn’t a priority, I question why they’re doing it.
If they’re blocked, I unblock them within a couple hours.
Benefit 4: It allows you to work remotely very effectively
This is another very important element. I consider this to be an awesome foundation to remote work.
Try to work remotely without tasks documented and I guarantee you one thing based on my experience… you are going to waste a TON of time and money.
And if you don’t think so than you will realize it when you see just how much more can get done with a system like this.
I even take it to an extreme lately of axing all recurring calls/meetings. No one-on-ones and no team calls.
How do i do this and stay aligned?
Simple. Everything is a task that I am following.
And so I don’t need them to give me updates on a call. I get them real-time.
Wrapping up
Documenting all the activities as a task is a bit more work upfront but pays off many times over in the longer-term.
I view it almost like a superpower.
Someone can have more resources and even be smarter… but if they’re not using a method like this… there is a very good chance you will be more effective and get more stuff done faster.
Because the system allows you to put a lot of balls in the air and not only keep them from dropping… but actually do them faster and more accurately.
