Apr 1, 2015
Project Management Where It Matters Most: Rural Nepal
What place does Asana, an online project management tool used by many tech companies and entrepreneurs throughout the developed world, have in rural Nepal?
A really important one, actually.
Asana, a web and mobile app that supports team collaboration and communication through workspaces, projects, and commenting tools, is a product of Silicon Valley’s innovation boom. The company was founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-engineer Justin Rosenstein, and is popular among many in the Valley and other entrepreneurial offices.
With Asana’s mission being to “enable teamwork without email,” you certainly wouldn’t expect its presence in rural Nepal, where most people don’t even have an email address.
Yet most of our 300 Possible team members (98% of which are Nepali) use Asana.
We’re big believers in creating impact through the use of effective tools that fuel efficiency and transparency, and Asana’s ability to create structure and accountability has been key to getting important work done at an impressive rate.
We’re also the first to admit that promoting Asana usage in rural Nepal is incredibly challenging. That said, certain obstacles haven’t deterred our team from mastering workflows, and through the dedication and persistence of our Nepali leadership we have been able to onboard nearly everyone with a basic level of computer literacy.
As co-founder Rosenstein says,
“Asana’s mission is to help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together more effortlessly. Our raison d’etre is building tools that enable others to benefit mankind, so it’s incredibly gratifying for us to see Asana helping Possible
succeed in its mission.”
How Does It Work?
We have specific team members who, in addition to their normal responsibilities, are also armed with the tools to train others on how to use Asana. Two of them, Anant and Deepak, hold office hours and conduct 1:1 sessions on a regular basis.
Every team member also goes through a robust onboarding process during their first week, which includes an Asana training session from their manager, along with readings like our 79-page Asana best-practices guide.
We also run team-wide trainings where we walk through the basics: why we use the product in the first place, as well as how to make most of the functions and tools like creating projects and assigning tasks and deadlines. After each class, team members make themselves available for one-on-one guidance, which people take advantage of often.
“When I teach Asana to our team, they’ll ask me anything: how to create task, how to comment, how to view the inbox, how to assign tasks to other, and how to change due date,” notes Deepak, our Data and Technology Officer.
As for Anant, he’s helped bring the culture of Asana-lingo to our everyday workflow:
“We have started to say ‘just task me on Asana’ if
someone requires something.”
People are eager to learn Asana, too. In a recent team meeting, we announced a voluntary training session that was happening next day, and everybody showed up.
And that’s incredible, because not everyone has a computer background in Nepal; for many team members, Asana sessions would actually be their first time using a computer.
Two Continents, One Team
Asana’s use in Nepal doesn’t come without its fair set of challenges. In addition to an unreliable and often slow Internet connection, many team members don’t have access to their own computer. To turn our whole team into super users, we need to have computers for everybody so they can practice using Asana every day.
One day we hope to get there.
Until then, we still acknowledge how Asana has changed our overall operations in Nepal and the impact it’s had on our team and patients. Team members are better able to organize their workload, prioritize their to-do’s, and be more accountable to their managers and colleagues.
And when it comes to delivering high-quality healthcare to the world’s poor, staying on top of our workload is not only important — it’s vital.
Asana also helps us feel more connected as a single, unified team, which is critically important and harder than it sounds for a group that spans two continents and several time zones.
We have a section for team-wide announcements where anyone can update the team on anything, from bringing on a new team member, to sharing internal documents and announcing noteworthy news. Each user also records their ‘daily commitment’ each morning; this is visible to everyone so we all know what others are working on and are all holding each other accountable, no matter where in the world we are.
“Do Great Things”
When chatting with many of our Nepali teammates in rural Nepal, I learned that before the days of Asana, many tasks were missing their deadlines, people felt less accountable towards their work, and Nepali team members weren’t always aware of what was happening in New York, Boston, or Kathmandu.
We have a ways to go in terms of some of the basics. Reliable Internet and electricity are not to be taken for granted in rural Nepal. But armed with tools like Asana and a team determination to master them, we’re able to Do Great Things even greater. We’ve treated over 235,000 patients since 2008 and the Nepali government has increased their investment in our work 14-fold.
“It’s been amazing to watch the Possible team roll out Asana to their employees in rural Nepal with great success,” says Rosenstein. “We’re proud to empower their team to make their greatest contributions to the world, no matter where they are.”
Learn about the other management tools and techniques we use to deliver healthcare to some of the world’s most impossible places in our Role of Management document.
