Workfront Wednesday: Did You Know? Learn from the Madness—How to Win at Work

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Next to St. Patrick’s Day and the Spring Equinox, the highlight of March for many is Selection Sunday, when millions across our country eagerly complete their hopeful brackets for March Madness, carefully analyzing the data and teams at play. Whether you are a college basketball fan or not, there are a handful of lessons to be learned from March Madness that you and your team can benefit from. 

Think about your business—what’s important to you? No matter your company or industry, your customers, employees, and product or service most likely come to mind. For these elements to mesh cohesively, you need a team that works together just as well. 

Below are three lessons we can each learn from and apply to our role within Workfront: 

1. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
2. It’s amazing how many times we go into something not fully prepared, thinking that if we just wing it, everything will turn out okay. College basketball is the same way—just because you are a 1-seed does not mean you are guaranteed a first-round win, which if you remember back in 2018, the Virginia Cavaliers learned the hard way. 
3. The most successful coaches, leaders and businesses have clearly thought out and defined a strategic game plan. The same goes for Workfront—as you configure Workfront for your organization’s current needs, you’ll also want to plan ahead for growth and maturity. Make sure to send out clear communication and training resources to prepare users for any change within the team or the business to ensure a smooth transition. Use this overview of the configuration and maturity phases to start your own path to Workfront maturity. 
4. There’s no I in team.
5. An individual contributor with extraordinary talent will not win you a championship—a team of the right people will. By building a winning culture, you will attract the right people who, when meshed together, can bring you to the top. 
6. Workfront is a work management platform with hundreds of features that cannot be mastered by a single user. While you may have the access level of system administrator, without a team of planners, workers and collaborators, you will not be able to single-handedly drive down go-to-market times or streamline repeatable processes. By having a variety of access levels setup within your organization, you can distribute work to the right people to make sure that work is getting done quicker and faster than ever before. 
7. National Employee Appreciation Day is Friday, March 6 - a great day to let your team know how valued they are, and set a reminder to review your organization’s access and make any adjustments necessary. 
8. Master the basics, over and over again.
9. A ridiculous 90.43% average from the line cements Steve Nash as the greatest free throw shooter of all time. His legacy doesn’t come without countless hours spent in the gym repeating the exact same shot over and over again, from the exact same spot on the court.
10. From a business standpoint, the way work gets done constantly changes, but the foundational elements, or free throws, remain the same. So it’s no surprise that your original Workfront configuration setup during implementation is no longer a scalable solution to where you are now. The basic foundational elements of Workfront—request queues, custom forms, project templates—will still be applicable to your organization, but utilizing these elements in new, more complex ways will help to drive your organization from initial setup to scalable and value-driven. 
11. A recent Workfront Wednesday:Ask the Expert webinar hosted by former customer turned employee, Mary Ann Erickson, dove into the work management journey and the climb to optimization that you can re-watch or download on our website, Workshop Recordings.  

There are many life and business lessons to be learned from the college basketball tournament every year, so if you have one that was not detailed in the blog, please post the details in the comments section below and we will reply back! Make sure to “Like” this post if you find it helpful!