As GovNet scaled, visibility across teams began to disappear. Each brand operated in its own way — from how they communicated internally and externally, to how they managed their teams and delivered their work.

Events were run using different systems. Metrics varied from team to team, with each brand using its own version of KPIs. Even the data collected for marketing was disconnected from what the business or other teams actually needed.

Incoming work was just as fragmented. Tasks were requested via emails, Teams messages, passing conversations in meetings (which some colleagues might not have attended), or dropped into personal inboxes with no visibility.

Work got captured in too many places — in chats, in emails, on scraps of paper, in spreadsheets (sometimes buried in a shared drive), or even as unspoken to-dos sitting in a Portfolio Director’s head.

Leaders couldn’t see what was happening — and more importantly, they couldn’t see what was slipping through the cracks.

GovNet had ambitious goals — but they lived in slide decks, not in day-to-day work.

The company had a clear Goals, a Mission Statement and a defined set of Values. Senior leadership discussed them regularly and presented them to the wider business. But for most employees, those principles felt abstract. There was no clear link between their daily tasks and the company’s strategic direction.

Teams delivered projects without consistent KPIs, making performance difficult to measure — let alone compare. BAU activity was disconnected from broader goals. And while the company’s values were well-intentioned, they weren’t embedded or tracked — so they were often overlooked.

To address this, we created a structure where Asana was used to manage day-to-day tasks and projects, and those projects were linked to Asana Goals. These Asana Goals were mapped directly to the company’s formal goals recorded in the HRIS system, ensuring alignment across operational and people-focused targets.

At the same time, financial goals were tracked in HubSpot — not just for the Finance team, but for revenue-owning departments like Events and Sales. This trio of systems — Asana, the HRIS, and HubSpot — were set up with shared language and aligned goals, so that different teams could finally see how their work contributed to the bigger picture.

For example, Sales teams worked in HubSpot, where they tracked financial goals and revenue metrics. Portfolio Directors used HubSpot to monitor commercial performance across events. Meanwhile, Event delivery teams tracked their operational tasks in Asana, with their projects rolling up into the same overarching goal — just from a different lens.

This structure allowed everyone to stay focused on what mattered, while still using the tools that best fit their workflow. The end result: connected goals, clear ownership, and a much stronger sense of strategic alignment across the business.

With different departments using different systems — or none at all — there was no joined-up view of work. Key-person dependency was high, and external collaboration lived outside of core tools. But the impact went deeper.

Central functions were expected to support multiple product teams (such as Events, Sales, and Marketing), but had no way to see what was being planned across the business. As a result, teams often scheduled overlapping events — stretching internal resources to breaking point. Workload spiked without warning, quality suffered, and no one could say whether the solution was better planning or hiring more people.

Data silos created their own risks. Marketing teams pulled from different datasets without visibility of each other’s plans, which led to the same audiences being contacted multiple times — often for unrelated campaigns. We used HubSpot to apply contact limits and improve audience governance, but the root issue was systemic: disconnected workflows.

Even internally, collaboration across divisions felt like working with another company. People used different tools, different processes, and different assumptions. Internal mobility was rare, because roles weren’t clearly documented or transferable. In some teams, undocumented workflows meant people could hide behind “secret” processes — making handovers, cover, and promotion unnecessarily difficult.

Managers couldn’t tell whether they had a resourcing problem or a visibility problem. With no centralised to-do lists or task management structure, it was impossible to get a true picture of how much work existed — for a person, a team, or a brand.

Were people underperforming? Or were they overperforming quietly, without recognition or reward, simply because their workload wasn’t visible?

This lack of clarity made planning difficult — and in some areas, near impossible. The Design team, for instance, supported multiple exhibitions and campaigns. The final four weeks before an event were always high pressure, yet exhibitions were often scheduled back-to-back across brands, with little cross-functional coordination.

Design was expected to deliver for each Brand’s Events — even as internal BAU work continued — but had no way to communicate or quantify the strain. With better visibility through Asana Portfolios, Workloads and Timelines, they could finally see when key events were scheduled. Enabling them to:

• Flag bottlenecks in advance

• Proactively reset expectations on lead times

• Escalate to management if support was needed

• Build a case for additional resourcing using real data

In short: they moved from overstretched and reactive to informed and strategic. And leadership finally had the insights to make resourcing decisions based on fact, not gut feel.

When work isn’t visible, leaders end up chasing updates instead of solving problems. GovNet’s managers were stuck in that reactive mode — spending too much time asking, “Where are we with this?” rather than focusing on what needed unblocking, supporting their teams, or looking ahead.

But that’s not what leadership should be.

Managers should be managing.
They should be steering projects, thinking strategically, mentoring their teams, and working toward broader business goals. Meetings should be focused on progress, priorities, and problem-solving — not just information-gathering.

At GovNet, the lack of visibility meant managers were often blindsided. They didn’t have a single view of all the work their team was handling — especially when BAU tasks, large-scale events, and internal change projects (like a rebrand or new website launch) all collided.

With Asana, that changed. Managers gained real-time visibility across tasks, projects, and portfolios. That meant they could:

• Balance BAU with change projects

• Run more effective 1:1s and team meetings

• Support career development via PDRs linked to real work

• Step back from micromanagement and focus on strategy

Instead of chasing status updates, they had space to lead — and their teams had the clarity to deliver.