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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
All Onboard!
How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
Contents
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The Vision
Think about where you, your team, and your company are now.
Think about where you want to be.
Think about where you could be.
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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
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Picture this
for yourself
and your team:
• Creative energy is used to generate value, rather than to
navigate a messy project.
• Time is spent on real work, rather than trying to understand
what’s working and what’s not.
• Everyone in your team is clear on who is doing what by
when and why. There is no action without purpose. All
commitments are honored.
• 21st-century communication. Email is no longer the first
thing you check in your workday. At last, all conversations are
kept with their projects, not in confusing or scattered inboxes.
• Purposeless status update meetings are gone. You actually
look forward to the meetings we have, because it’s when your
team comes together to grow and turn ideas into action.
• It’s possible to quickly know if you are ahead or behind on
anything. With a scroll of the mouse, it’s possible to dive into
the smallest project detail. No more reporting required.
• Frictionless collaboration: anything that used to interrupt
the continuous joint creation of value is gone. What’s left is
true teamwork
All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
Picture this
for your company:
• Your customers are impressed by your impeccable follow-up on their requests.
• You actually finish your projects before their due date. That felt novel and strange
at first, but now it’s the norm.
• You are recognized as the market leaders, not the followers. You are constantly
first-to-market since you reduced your product development cycle by 50%.
• You have tripled how many creative ideas are transformed into really marketable
content to keep you on everyone’s mind.
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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
Now, let’s compare that vision to the current reality of most knowledge-working
teams, which usually resemble something like this:
AREONYO
U
A
WINNING
Imagine you get invited to play on a soccer team.
But before you join, there are a few things to note:
Only 4 out of the 11 players on the field
would know which goal is theirs.
TEAM?
Only 2 out of the 11 care.
Only 2 out of the 11 know what position they play
and know exactly what they are supposed to do.
And 9 of your players are, in some way, competing
against their own team members rather than the
opponent.
Would you join this team?
If you work in the US, odds are: you already have. If you’re a manager, odds are: you’re LEADING this team.
Stunning findings from The 8th Habit by Steven Covey:
37%
15%
said they have a clear understanding
of what their organization is trying
to achieve and why.
felt that their organization fully
enables them to execute key goals.
20%
20%
were enthusiastic about
their team’s and
organization’s goals.
20%
said they have a clear “line of sight”
between their tasks and their team’s
and organization’s goals.
This is a very real and urgent problem.
fully trusted the
organization they work for.
What are the odds of the soccer team
winning? What are the odds of the
office team performing successfully?
All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
How did these team dynamics come to be almost expected? What is causing this disengagement epidemic?
Before blaming it on particular people in your company, let’s look at the way we are working:
— Tasks and projects seem to be disconnected from the strategy of the company.
The rate of change is so fast that we’re not able to adjust our strategy
and projects quickly enough.
— Within ongoing projects: the shifting priorities, sudden turns, changes
in the circumstances that impact delivery are all buried and lost in a pile of emails,
text messages, voicemails, and chats.
— The team meetings that are supposed to help us get clarity and make decisions
are now considered a chunk of lost time. There is no failsafe way to ensure that
we address pertinent points, stick to the agenda, and make actionable decisions.
The good news is: if you’re reading this, you’re moving in the right direction.
You believe that by adopting Wrike you can eradicate those sources of team disengagement.
And you’re right — we’ve seen teams do it time and time again.
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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
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Can’t wait to get started? When it comes to working in Wrike, the more, the merrier. We believe that collaboration is the only way
to unleash all the potential of your team. When you bring more colleagues into Wrike, the benefits grow exponentially. Therefore,
it’s time to quickly get others onboard!
On the technical side, getting others into Wrike is extremely simple; it only requires a few clicks.
On the human side, we need to consider a few things before, during, and after the on-boarding. This is very important to ensure
that your team sustainably improves its performance with the help of Wrike.
Keep in mind that for most people making this jump implies a big change in their work habits — and old habits die hard. Expect
people to show some resistance, because it’s completely natural. The suggestions in this ebook will help you combat resistance
and accelerate your team’s adoption of a new working style, placing you on the path toward All-Star performance levels!
An overview of the steps:
1. Start with WHY
2. Prepare the Ground
3. Have a Wrike Kick-Off Meeting
4. Create First Steps
5. Schedule Your Weekly Team Meeting 2.0
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1. Start with WHY
Before you try to explain Wrike to others, you need to answer
an important question for yourself: “Why?”
Why do you want your team to adopt Wrike at all? This
question typically has a two-part answer:
• Set the Vision: Create a compelling description of the
destination. To come up with that description, ask yourself
additional questions like: Where do we what to be? What
kind of team would we like to become? What are our team
goals?
• Feel the Pain: Understand what is not working right now.
What is the cost of continuing to do nothing to fix those
problems? What are the risks of standing still?
Addressing both sides will clarify the purpose
of shifting to Wrike.
In the previous sections of this guide you can find generic examples of what is possible for yourself, your team, and your
company, as well as get a good look at the gloomy picture of the current situation for average knowledge workers. We strongly
suggest you complement those points with specific examples in your company to support your case in making the switch to Wrike.
All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
The Champagne Moment
Now that the purpose for adopting Wrike is clear, it’s time to
set a specific short-term target that is aligned with your longterm vision. We call this setting up your “Champagne Moment”:
How will you know you are able to celebrate success with your
team (and pop the bubbly)?
We suggest you frame it in terms of what makes you
successful as a team or a company; don’t set tool-specific goals
like: “Everybody will use Wrike within 3 weeks.” A few examples
of great Champagne Moments are:
• For the first time, we will deliver Project X one day before its due
date, without working on weekends or evenings.
• We will double the number of articles published during the
month of September without adding people or extra hours.
With a company-focused target to strive for, progress is easier
to track and the positive change resulting from your new tool
becomes clear!
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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
2. Prepare the Ground
It’s convenient to prepare the ground before actually having
a conversation with the team about Wrike. These three steps
will help:
1. Prepare your Wrike Workspace for a demonstration
2. Have individual conversations first
3. Review the Wrike Kick-Off meeting agenda
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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
1. Prepare your Wrike Workspace for a
demonstration
You could describe an elephant to someone, or you could
simply show it to them — the latter will always be more
effective. Likewise, there are many great things to say about
Wrike (you might never finish!), yet seeing how it works will
have a much bigger impact on your coworkers.
The best way to demonstrate Wrike is by walking them
through a real project you are working on. You can either
create that project for yourself (learn more about about
creating projects and tasks here), or you can import an existing
project you might have from another tool (learn more about
importing projects and tasks here)
All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
2. Have individual conversations first
To ensure a good group dynamic, it’s best to discuss your
proposal to use Wrike with each member of the team
individually, in an informal setting (over coffee, lunch, etc.),
and then have the conversation with the whole group.
This will help you identify beforehand who supports your
idea (i.e. who can provide positive feedback during the group
discussion), and it also gives you time to understand and
address the concerns of less-eager colleagues. With this input,
you can fine-tune the agenda for the Wrike Kick-Off Meeting.
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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
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3. Review the Wrike Kick-Off meeting agenda
We propose a very simple agenda for the Wrike Kick-Off meeting with your team:
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Start with your WHY (10 minutes)
Wrike demonstration tour (15 minutes)
Open the floor to concerns (10 minutes)
Define the “Rules of the Game” (20 minutes)
Next steps (5 minutes)
Copy the agenda above and paste it into a task you can create with the name “Wrike Kick-Off Meeting”. You can modify the
agenda at your convenience to add more detail, based on the individual conversations you have with the team members. Here
are a few more thoughts to get you ready for your meeting:
Start with WHY:
Share the Vision and the Pain that you’ve built out beforehand (see the “Start with WHY” section). Allow others to participate
in this vision. Do they agree on the pain points you came up with for the company or team? Are there any other ideas to
contribute?
Wrike demonstration tour:
Start with this short video as an introduction, and then use the project you prepared in Wrike to show them what your projects
could look like with the tool, and explain how that would help solve current pains.
Open the floor to concerns:
This is a very important step: ask the team to voice their concerns. Encourage each person to speak up and say something.
Listen attentively and try to understand why they bring up each topic. Try to read between the lines: sometimes a voiced
concern can be used to hide an underlying fear.
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Example:
When someone says: “I have an iterative creative style, and I might create some confusion for my colleagues with my work in
progress;” they might really mean: “I don’t like people seeing what I do. Period.”
A good way to uncover these underlying issues is by asking the person to develop why they think it could become problem a bit
more, providing the team with very specific examples.
DON’T: Refute their worries or try to immediately provide the solutions by yourself. Rather, for each raised concern ask the
team: What can we do together to make this work?
Define the “Rules of the Game”:
Having black & white usage guidelines will give the team clarity for action in the future, and avoid room for bad interpretation.
These should be agreed upon jointly by the whole team. Try to define no more than 5 points to get started. Here are some great
examples of Rules of the Game that other successful teams have applied:
• If it’s not in Wrike, it doesn’t exist. Any commitment for action will be in Wrike.
• “Who will do what by when?” — Each task must have a single owner/assignee (who),
a specific task description (what), and a due date (when).
• Before you run to email or text, first communicate via Wrike.
• We will run our Weekly Team Meeting through Wrike. A task will be created with the agenda.
Decisions and next steps will be captured live.
Other good ideas to consider:
• Only when the task author has declared satisfaction can the task be marked as Complete.
• When in doubt, share it! Favor collaboration and colleague insight over individual work.
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Next steps:
Vision: done! Tour: given! Concerns: addressed! Rules: defined! Now: let’s get started! Below are some tasks get your team
going. You can create these and individual tasks within Wrike and assign them to your team members at the end of the meeting.
All that remains is to a define due date for the team to complete everything by:
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Bookmark the Wrike Workspace in my browser
Save [email protected] to my email contacts
Complete my profile: picture, name, title, contact info
Complete the Welcome Quest
Watch the 15-minute video: Wrike 101 - Basic features
Download the Wrike app for Android or iPhone
Install Wrike’s email client plug-in/add-on/gadget (learn more here)
Also, don’t forget to agree on a date and time for your next team meeting.
All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
3. Have a Wrike
Kick-Off Meeting
The hardest part of the work has been done. Now, it’s time
to invite your team to the Wrike Kick-Off Meeting. Make sure
you do it in a place where everyone can feel comfortable, and
make sure the screen you will be using to present is large
enough for everyone to see all the details.
Open the agenda task you created in Wrike just for this
purpose, and simply go through your list of topics one step at
a time.
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All Onboard! How to Get Your Team Onboard with Wrike
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4. Create First Steps
Everybody should walk out of the Wrike Kick-Off Meeting with
clear next steps and an agreed upon due date for those steps
to be completed.
It’s easy to watch the completion of every step within Wrike.
Expert Tip: Celebrate successes immediately!
Don’t wait until the end of the project, or until your first
major deliverables are due. As soon as people start
completing a few of the First Step tasks, as well as other
tasks related to your projects, recognize your team
members! A simple “Great job!” comment within the
tasks should be enough. You can @mention each of them
individually to ensure they receive a notification, or even
use @MyTeam in the comments to notify everyone about
positive progress.
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5. Schedule Your Weekly Team Meeting 2.0
A proven way to ensure the sustainability of a new habit is to go for it as a group. Running your team’s Weekly Meeting with
Wrike will reinforce the new habits and return meaning to those otherwise tedious sessions.
With Wrike you can do all of the following:
• Get a high-level overview of the status of projects
and processes through custom
widgets on the Dashboard and the Analytics view
• Zoom in to selected projects to compare the planned
schedule vs. current status
• Review the completion of previous commitments
• Balance the team’s workload for upcoming weeks
• Define next steps: who will do what by when?
Capture them in Wrike on the spot!
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A Final Word:
As your team members grow in their new collaborative working habits, make sure to
continually identify and address issues jointly. Maybe some Rules of the Game will
need to be added or changed. Provide constant feedback and recognition on simple,
intermediate accomplishments, and witness a high-performance team building itself
in your company!