Your mission is our mission

The following is based on a talk I originally presented at a global company all hands. 

At Asana, our mission is to help humanity thrive by enabling the world’s teams to work together effortlessly. 

While it’s easy to look at the news these days and decide that the world is getting worse in every way, recent history shows us some key ways the world is getting better. Humanity has made enormous progress over the last two centuries, dramatically reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty, educating a greater portion of the population, and vastly improving health outcomes on a global scale. 

I believe in a future where these positive trends continue and we solve our biggest problems to ensure our continued thriving. Asana will help bring that future to life by unlocking the ability of our customers to achieve their missions faster. 

When we work together, we can do great things. Here are some of the important areas where Asana customers are helping solve problems and co-creating a better life for people and the planet.

Sustainability 

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity, requiring dramatic changes to our world infrastructure. Our job at Asana is to help customers move quickly and more effectively as they work towards creating a sustainable planet. 

One of our most inspiring customers is Viessmann. Even though the company is over 100 years old, they’ve transformed into a modern agile organization with the help of Asana. By modernizing their internal operations with Asana, they’re able to move faster to help their customers around the world reduce energy footprints through improved heating and cooling infrastructure. 

Making energy alternatives available to consumers are customers like Axium Solar, Solcius, Voltalia, GP Joule, Solar Impulse Foundation, Enbala, Greensaver, Digital Energy Solutions, and Vote Solar. 

To take full advantage of energy alternatives, Gogoro, Proterra, Wind, and Lilium are electrifying transportation. 

Terramera, Good Eggs, Future of Fish, XpertSea are working to produce and distribute food more sustainably. 

Customers like C40, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Environmental Solutions Initiative, Wildlife Conservation Society, Stand.earth, Environmental Defense Fund, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and California State Parks Foundation are advocating directly for environmental protection. 

Healthcare

In the future, people will be healthier than ever and live longer lives, thanks to the vital work of Asana customers in the healthcare industry. Verge Genomics, for example, is improving the traditional drug discovery process with machine learning. Omada Health is helping people conquer chronic diseases with behavioral science. And GoodRx empowers Americans to take control of their budgets by connecting them to affordable prescriptions.

They’re not the only organizations using Asana to build a healthier future.

Teams at Roche, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Genentech, Leukaemia Foundation, Vertex, Vireo, TriLink Biotechnologies, Pivot Bio, Virta, Recursion, and Reflexion are driving biotech innovation. 

Norton Healthcare, The Iowa Clinic, Care Here, and Parsley Health are providing direct patient care. 

eHealth Africa, Frontline AIDS, Colorectal Cancer Alliance, and Children’s Cancer Research Fund are making healthier lives possible through advocacy and fundraising. 

Education

The economy is changing rapidly and we have a greater imperative than ever to educate the global workforce effectively and affordably.

A number of higher education institutions around the world leverage Asana to better serve their students, including Columbia University, New York University, Monash University, Griffith University, and University of Illinois.

While other Asana customers are working on building altogether new paths for learning like Lambda School, Make School, Wikimedia Foundation, and Coursera. They’re helping people adapt their skills quickly to the best opportunities in our dynamic economy. Hack Reactor, for example, helps people reinvent their careers with a 12-week coding course. (A few of our very own engineers at Asana went through this program.) 

The Primary School is focused on even younger students. Their team works in underserved communities in the San Francisco Bay Area with a mission to create a more holistic model for education that draws on the strengths of the child’s entire community.

Government & Nonprofits

Governments and nonprofit organizations are also turning to work management to build thriving communities. 

Jorge Elorza, Mayor of the City of Providence told us, “When people call City Hall, they might have a small issue—in the grand scheme of things—but to that constituent it’s very important. So it’s important that nothing slips through the cracks. That’s exactly what Asana helps us do. It helps us do all these little things that allow us to be more ambitious and take on bigger and bigger projects.”

Other governments better serving their citizens are the Australian Government Digital Transformation Agency, State of Minnesota, City of Manchester, and City of Boston. 

United Way of Salt Lake, Together We Rise, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Hope for Haiti, Médecins Sans Frontières, GiveWell, Give Directly, Meals on Wheels, Compassion Australia, and The Humane League are championing social causes through their nonprofit work. 

Why we’re here

When I think about these customers—as well as our customers in the media, technology, consumer, transportation, and other industries—I feel really good about the future we’re building, and I’m excited to keep pursuing our mission. 

All important progress in the world requires teams of people to work together. But today, most progress is severely impeded by the difficulty of coordinating teams and a pervasive lack of clarity about what needs to be done, and when. For me, working on Asana is an opportunity to solve the problems around “work about work” for teams everywhere, which means we get to play a part in all of these forms of progress, rather than focusing on just one. 

If Asana succeeds at its mission, every one of these teams—from small partnerships to global organizations—will be vastly more efficient and effective because they have greater clarity, and the people who comprise these teams will feel more confident and less stressed.

We built Asana because the work people do together matters. We’re proud of how often teams tell us that Asana gives them the clarity to make their work today more effortless, and we’re just getting started.