Finding Your Why with Notion
What is Notion?
During a recent work project, I was introduced to Notion as a way to: track the project’s progress: mark work completed by job duty; and link to important documents and resources necessary for the project. After completing the project, I took a LinkedIn Learning course to dive deeper into Notion, and I came away particularly impressed with the ability to really tell the theme, the why, of your project with Notion.
An Example
During my course, I learned that Notion includes a Project Charter template. I created one below for Charlie and Cricket’s project (see the Does it Have to be a Video Call blog to meet Charlie and Cricket!). While I removed several parts of the template to streamline my hypothetical project, this template gave me a lot of ways to really set out the goals of the project which can then be easily accessed for anyone on the team when they want to go back and think about that why for the work they are doing.
Once More with Context
In their 2018 article “Narrative Reframing on Complex Projects”, Bowman and Crawford analyzed the existing research regarding how organizations make sense of their purposes through narrative elements which can reinforce existing themes for a team or help push the team to develop new whys for their work. In summary they note, “whoever authors the story, controls the structure and plot, and therefore, the message and meaning, or how the story makes sense” (Bowman & Crawford, 2018, p. 951).
Using a project management tool like Notion comes with a lot of versality, including the ability to really make sense of why they are working on a project while effectively completing their work. This is just one facet of Notion. You can explore a lot more with a free trial. And, no, I’m not paid to talk about Notion, and it is not the only project management tool I plan to discuss! Which one do I think Charlie and Cricket will most find themselves using as their project progresses?
References
Bowman, G., & Crawford, L. (2018, July 18). Narrative reframing on complex projects. Academic Design Management Conference, London UK. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329167206_Narrative_Reframing_on_Complex_Projects
