The Macro

Problem

Employees struggle to understand the ‘big picture’ at work. What projects are live? When are they due? Are they on track? What are the goals? We’ll refer to this info as the macro.

In contrast, the micro (task backlog for a single project) is well served by existing tools such as JIRA/Trello etc.

Current approaches

Current methods to understand the macro do not scale well and are often synchronous. Approaches include:

• All-hands meetings: Sync, not searchable/discoverable. Inefficient as the audience cannot control the flow on information.
• Weekly Zoom calls: Sync, not searchable/discoverable. Often invite/team lead only.
• Central docs: Often dry, long, and hard to find. Hard to get teams to update these regularly.
• Company wide dashboards: Good for metrics/KPIs however less good for understand the high level status of projects.

Macro today

At the moment Macro provides some of the macro. The workspace/home page shows:

• which projects are active
• are they on track
• summary of the project

In addition, following projects + updates lets individuals keep a closer eye on individual projects.

However this information is displayed in a fairly basic way, and isn’t super actionable. in particular:

• It isn’t very visual making it hard to quickly understand timelines and goals
• It doesn’t surface relevant project info so you have to navigate to each project separately to see important updates and threads

What does success look like

At a high/abstract level we want to empower all employees to quickly discover and understand the macro.

For me the test is:

Imagine you’ve joined a new company day 1, can you understand at a high level what’s going on quickly and easily, with no help from anyone else?

The reason I like this test is that it’s the most extreme scenario. If even a new joiner can quickly understand the macro, imagine how easy it will be for existing employees.

If we solve this well, anyone in a company will be able to navigate their workspace on Macro and quickly and easily grasp the macro. No Zoom calls/all hands, etc required.

The productivity gains and improved context should be extremely valuable for companies.

How can I help?

As mentioned above, this project is still very early, so if you have any high level thoughts on the above, it would be fantastic to hear.

And, as always, follow the project to receive updates. Post and comment on threads with feedback and ideas.