Dear All,
This article is exclusive to the Angry Agony Aunt readers. If this idea actually pays off, it could mean the end to face-to-face interaction in the workplace. … Ahhh, what a wonderful day that would be!
TAKING IT TO TASK
Two names you may not know. Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein. These fellas may not be as recognisable as their mate, Mark Zuckerberg but that doesn’t make them any less culpable for the screaming birth of Facebook.
In the early days, Dustin bunked at Harvard with Zuckerberg and earned a cool billion for his trouble. A couple of years later, Justin hightailed it to Facebook an earned himself enough money to add the occupation ‘millionaire’ to his CV. But before you could say, ‘Dude, where’s my chequebook’, Facebook, has turned into, like, old news. The new news is a little web site called ‘Asana’. But us cool kids call it ‘Work Book’.
Asana [WorkBook] is touted as a ‘modern web application that keeps teams in sync, a shared task list where everyone can capture, organize, track and communicate what they are working on in service of their common goal’. Work can be shared, allocated and managed. In plain English, Asana is an online to-do list, where everyone in your team can see your business. And just as war sorts the men from the boys, Asana (a Sanskrit word meaning ‘yoga pose’) has the potential to sort the warriors from the downward facing dogs and the cobras from the one-legged pigeons. This Asana thingie, is a warning shot that will terrify lazy middle managers.
And that’s all good and well for now, but the fatal shot won’t come until the techies in Palo Alto
WorkMoodBook would be an online page where all the details of your work and co-workers can be brought together in one screen grab. In the centre of the page is you, and around you are squiggly lines linking you with your teammates, managers, subordinates and clients. These lines will then have offshoots linked with projects, tasks and if used correctly, outdated to-do lists.
WorkMoodBook will be exactly that. A page culminating your work, your moods about your work and your mood about the morons you work with. And for now, here are some helpful suggestions for Dustin and Justin to consider when they get bored with Asana.
The WorkMoodBook ‘LikeMoodStar’
Everyone loves getting a star. A LikeMoodStar is where you give a working relationships a malleable grading. For example, if your boss gives you a sliver of a compliment, you could give them one ‘LikeMoodStar’. Then with enough ‘LikeMoodStars’, your boss could graduate to an elevated ‘LikeMoodGrade’. Conversely, if your boss is an ugly piece of work and constantly blames you for their own incompetence, you can rescind their ‘LikeMoodStatus’ and demote them.
The ‘Star-Of-The-Day’ and ‘Douche-Of-The-Day’ Button
The ‘Star-Of-The-Day’ and ‘Douche-Of-The-Day’ Button
Star-Of-The-Day could be awarded to the aggressive bus driver who go you to work on time or to the Admin Assistant who washed your manky coffee cup. With enough Star-Of-The-Day awards, you could earn internet cash that could only be spent on WorkMoodBook associated games to buy things that don’t exist (see Farmville and Cityville).
Equally, the Douche-Of-The-Day award, could be awarded to, well, obviously, the douche of the day. With enough ‘Douch-Of-The-Day Awards’ you would be temporarily suspended from your WorkMoodBook account for thirty days. Unfortunately the thirty day lock-out won't apply to real life but without access to your WorkMoodBook, you'll be flying blind and won't have a clue as to what's going on between computers. Then after your WorkMoodBook ban has been lifted, you'll be welcomed back. But not before you spend a further thirty days on a 'learner' login learning etiquette all again. When you pass that test, you're full profile will be reinstated.
Relationship Charting Feature
We all love being judged. The 'Relationship Charting Feature' is the best way to formalise this process. For example, this tool will come in handy at annual performance reviews. When it's time, the chart can be be neatly printed on an A4 sheet or exported to a Powerpoint Presentation. Then you and your boss can chinwag about the factual line graph of your feelings about each other and how the year played out. Day by delicious day.
However, relationship charting won’t be limited to you and your boss. You could also rate your staff in friendliness and efficiency. Everyone will have an opportunity to be graded out of ten for every task they carry out. Admitially, this will cause passive aggressive encounters in the kitchen when you’ve given your co-worker four out of ten when they clearly wanted no less than an eight but can you imagine the fun of the relationship charting feature!
Client Tracking
Your customers would also benefit from your WorkMoodBook page. For example, they can upload their order direct to your profile and failing the death of the internet, they can log in at any time to check the progress of their order. They'd be able to read the tasks involved in creating their order, read internal communication on dedicated messageboards and even be able to instant message to Barry in the Warehouse to check the delivery time. Sure, for some users like Barry will never understand instant messaging (because he mistakes the 'ding' of instant messaging with the 'ding' of the microwave) but at least the customer can try.
MoodNewsFeeds
A MoodNewsFeed is a great way for your co-workers and subordinates to ‘get the message’ about everyone in the team. For example, if you can see that Steve and Gary from Sales have listed ‘hangover’ as their mood, you can deduce the sales meeting probably went a bit longer and a bit harder than originally planned. Also, if Penny updates, ‘morning sickness’ as her mood, you can further deduce that either Steve or Gary has some explaining to do.
MoodProfileFace
Instead of having a profile photo of your ugly face in the middle of your page, your profile photo would be replaced by a coloured ‘mood face’. Even though there are technically two real ‘moods’ in life - good and bad, WorkMoodBook will have a hundred or so to chose from. A ‘merger’ mood could be available for when you have too many feelings to categorise. This ‘merger mood’ could only be used three times a year, but if you're female, you'll be able to have this available to you once a month.
MoodStatusUpdates
This will surely be the crowning glory of WorkMoodBook. At any point in time you can log in and check the mood of your boss. For example, if your boss has updated, ‘Cathy was 30 minutes late today’, and you’re Cathy, it may not be the best time to ask for a pay rise. It may be better to wait for your boss to update ‘Tim didn’t meet deadline’.
But even after all these sparkling suggestions, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can’t walk before we can crawl. WorkMoodBook hasn't happened yet. Before it does, we have to let Dustin and Justin tinker with their little Asana project first. We have to give them an opportunity to give us an opportunity to remember (forget) another logon and password. We also have to give it time for our co-workers to suitably irritate us with the phrase ‘Asana me’.
It'll only be in a couple of years time when you stop caring about the Asana web page, you may just receive a little email inviting you to joining the WorkMoodBook community. This will then be followed up by a trip to the movies to see the dramatized sequel to ‘The Social Network’ called ‘Taking It To Task: The Dustin and Justin Story’. That’s right, you heard it here first. Spread the word.
* The above suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg. If you have a good (or ridiculous) suggestion for WorkMoodBook, send it to angryauntis@gmail.com. You don't get any money for it but if the idea takes off, I'll let Dustin and Justin know where the ideas came from.
