[INSERT INTRO VIDEO]

Up until now, Todoist has been yours. The conventions are yours. The projects make sense because you’re the one who named them. The workspace works because you built it for an audience of one.

The second you invite a team, the job changes. You’re not building for yourself anymore – you’re building something other people have to use, in their own way, without the context that’s still all in your head.

The single most useful thing you can do before any rollout decision is look at your workspace through your team’s eyes. Not your team in the abstract – maybe just one specific person that comes to mind. The skeptic (every team has one), or the new hire who wasn’t around for any of the decisions that were made.

A quick one before we get into it: each of these questions has a step-by-step in Set Up Your Team Workspace, so if you’ve already worked through that one, you’ll find some of this familiar. Treat it as a gut-check rather than new ground to cover, skim what you remember, and feel free to jump ahead to Lesson 2 whenever you’re ready.

Four questions to ask yourself before you go further. Take them in order, as each one sets up the next.

Will my team know why this matters?

If you can’t answer in one sentence, neither can they. Having the “why” clearly laid out ensures that everyone is on the same page, and it’s the perfect place to come back to when things feel shaky. Write the one-sentence before you set up anything else. It really runs through, and connects, every team-facing communication that follows.

Is the workspace built for what they need this week, or what I want it to be eventually?

You can keep tweaking the structure right until the trial closes. Or you can build the smallest version that covers your team’s real work this week, and let them shape the rest. Build the smaller thing.

When my team logs in for the first time, what do they see – and does it feel welcoming?

If the honest answer is “the projects I’ve added them to, and I’m hoping they figure it out,” write a Welcome Kit. It’s only four fields, but it’s the difference between a team that arrives and knows what to do, and one that arrives and waits to be told.

Am I inviting the whole team because that’s efficient, or because I haven’t thought about who actually needs to be in first?

Twelve invites at once often produces twelve confused messages. Three invites to the right people produces momentum. Let’s start with three.

Next: Day One

In the next lesson, you’ll go through your team’s Day One to ensure they’re set up for success.

“Most people, since they got their first job, have been told to be ‘professional.’ Too often, that’s code for leaving your humanity at home. But to build strong relationships, you have to care personally.”

Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor