Switching from Trello to ClickUp using Process Mapping (Example ft. Michael)

Over the past quarter, one of the biggest requests we've had from our members inside the processdriven membership is to see more ClickUp accounts behind the scenes. So you guys here on YouTube, you see a lot of the process driven workspace and how we're organizing our ClickUp, but you don't get to see very many other businesses, which is one of the things that we are trying to change. That's why during one of the recent quarterly events we do for our members, we invited two of our members to share the behind the scenes inside their own ClickUp accounts. The prompt for this was simple. We asked each member to share one process that was working really well for them and show us either the workflow map or the ClickUp structure that they use in order to organize that process on an ongoing basis. Now, as the title of this video probably kind of gives away, our guest today is Michael. And he's going to be. Well, actually, let me just let him introduce himself. So, Michael, do you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about what we're working through today?

Yeah, sure. I have businesses called Spilling My Beans. I've been working at it for the better part of 15 years on and off. And what I do is I try to help build processes within organizations and I really get into the nitty gritty. I try to find out what works, what doesn't, and ask a lot of questions to make people think about their processes. Sometimes it's the whole thing, sometimes it's not. And I also train managers, so I train managers who are just new. They've never put on a manager hat before and they don't know what to do. They've never managed people. And so I help them as well.

That's amazing. So I have to ask also, what process are you going to walk us through today? Because I know you, Michael, at this point, you do a little bit of everything. So when I was like, hey, can you come out and talk about a process? There are so many things I'm sure you could teach us or walk through. What's the one that you want to focus on today?

It's going to seem like really weird. I know I mentioned this to you before, we've talked about this before where I was. I've always attached myself to organizations, small and medium large and stuff and try to tackle the things. But I. But I realized my partner, lovely partner, who's a writer, who is her own thing, she's a solopreneur, she just does her own thing. I've never really worked on a process that's like that. And it seemed to me like it was a really good challenge. And so I'm going to walk through that and how it would apply to other writers or creative people and what kind of a template we've made as a result of it. And she's got a great flow. It's just, it's, it's. The way she had it before was so overwhelming. So like there was just so much to it. And, and it felt like every time she started one, she never felt like she was making progress. She shouldn't, she couldn't see it move through the steps. And so, and she has lots of writer friends that, that have the same problem. They, they get stuck and they don't know how to move it ahead and they're not in tech either. So this is a big sort of challenge for it.

Now, as you can probably tell by that intro, Michael has so much that he could share and oh my gosh, it was so hard to edit down this video. But to make YouTube here, we have to take just one clip. So I'm going to pick it up where Michael's showing us how they workflow mapped the initial process with his partner Marcy, and then we're going to talk about how he simplified that process together to set him up for building things inside ClickUp. We are not going to have time in this short video to go through what exactly this all looks like in ClickUp. But for those of you who are members of the ProcessDriven membership, you can log into your account and you'll be able to see the full length tutorial, the full length tour, and the demo of all the advanced stacking templates that Michael has set up inside that video.

All right, so this is an example of her Trello board and she has sort of a lot of things going on in her Trello board. I'm going to close this thing down for a second. And this is how she used to do things for all of her work. So we're going to focus on review work. But she used to put everything in her Trello board and it's big and long and each one of these things have a million little steps in them. But the problem is that she's not able to use Trello to help be like, like manager for her. Going to steal some of your sort of terminology. And she needs an extra helper to help her remind her of things or to show her that she's making progress. And so I wanted to focus on just some of the things that she's recently been doing, which is reviews. So she does a lot of review work for books. Someone will ask her for a review on a particular book or maybe she'll have an idea for review on a book and she'll start putting that together and pitch to somebody and then go through that entire process. However, this is what her lists used to look like. One gigantic list.

Oh my gosh.

Absolutely no timing in it, no statuses, no no sense of progress. And she did break it up a bit, but it's really big and some of these things aren't really needed. And so she does a lot of repeated steps and it's because she's just on her own, she works on her own and she's been doing this for like 10 plus years. And so she just sort of, I don't want to say stuck in her ways, but she just has a rhythm and she goes through it and she doesn't think to change things. So she thinks these are all the things that she likes to do. She likes to check mark things, by the way, if you hadn't figured that one out. She loves to check mark things. So that'll be for something else later on. So we said, okay, so how can we simplify this? And of course, I know I've mentioned this to you before, but what I try to do when we go in to try to first address a process is to map it all out so we can figure out where the decisions are, we can figure out what the steps are, when there's waiting time and when there's not. I'm a big sort of obsessee about when you have to wait, when you don't have to wait. And negative approval systems, which we've mentioned before as well, where you have to sort of force the person you're waiting for an approval or an answer from or some information about to get to your timeline instead of you trying to wait for their timeline because that sticks processes and they don't go anywhere. So she didn't have any of that set up before. She had no templates, no email templates, everything was custom. So we went through the process of mapping things. I'm going to switch over to another. So this is what it used to look like. I know you've seen this before, but I'm going to share it out. This is what it looked like after we mapped it. So we just went through and we said, well, what are all the steps you do? What are the things that you do beforehand? What are the things you need to do when you pitch out to your publishers or your market editors, which is the people she's reaching out to. What are all the little steps that she needs to do and kind of say why? And that kind of stuff. And you notice there's a lot of symbology in this map. And I'll zoom in a bit because it's probably hard to see. But, you know, basically what you're trying to do is figure out how many steps are there. Combine as many steps as you can, identify spots like these where you think, hey, you know, you could really benefit from a template instead of always having to do things custom and then sort of figure out how long it takes you to do things. Wherever you see these little weight boxes, those are the things that we want to try to either solve by doing a negative approval system or we want to find some other way to deal with it. Maybe there's some things that are completely out of your control and you can't use that kind of a system. That's okay. You just, you gotta figure out what to do with that. And then all these little yellow boxes are like decisions that she might need to make. And I didn't name them all. And I don't try to put in a bunch of fancy symbols when you're trying to just deal with mapping it out to originally because if you do, then it gets confusing and you have to teach people about process mapping. And I didn't want to do any of that stuff and I just wanted to be clear. Even though this looks really complicated, but.

What I like about this is if I think about it in layers, like I've seen this chart before, we give it a little bit of back chart. And I remember when I first saw this, it was simpler, like there was more. So just boxes. And then the layers started getting added on and then the wait times are getting color coded. So I think just like most exercises for when I'm gathering this started off just, just saying, hey, what do you do?

Oh, very simply, yeah, absolutely. And then we layered on things and that's kind of the way this whole thing's going to go. It's going to be a layering process because I found that working with and living with a creative person that she really enjoys seeing things as they're needed and not everything at once. Where I'm a kind of, I like everything at once so I can figure out where stuff is. She just wants to know what she needs to do now and then what she needs to do maybe next. She doesn't want to know all the rest of it. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. We started very simple, and then we just started layering things on, like, where templates required, what things can we cut? Like the little scissors that are possible things that you can cut out. And. And this is just to get her used to the map and whatnot. And of course, put time on it. So this is what it looked like at some point. And this was basically mapping that other thing. So that trello card that we all saw, that's what we were doing. We were just putting this into something that we can now visualize. And it looks like a lot when you visualize it now. Right. You're just like. And this is just her review process, by the way. This is just what she does to format a review for a magazine or an online publication. So this is what it ended up being like. So then I said, we need to simplify these things and put them into buckets. And I already kind of started to do this. Inside of the map, you'll see these little dotted lines where I start to put things into chunks, into groups. And I say, this is planning and this is pitch work, and this is reading and this is writing. And for me it makes sense, but for somebody else, they really want to see it simplified. So I said, I'm going to take all of the stuff that you don't need. I'm going to take all the little bitty steps that are just things you need to know how to do and aren't really needed for the process. And I'm going to collapse them into chunks. This is what we end up with. It's a much cleaner process. You can see how the idea goes through different stages. We've got a couple of stages named on top, and we can now make use of these words because she understands them. You can see where the decisions are. We really try to make the decisions as light as we possibly can because you want to do as much decision making as you can while you're making the process. So when you get to the decision point, it's meaningful, it's valuable, it's something you should be doing. So that's from over here again. So that's from this to this to this.

Now, Michael, can I interrupt you with a question?

Sure, please.

I already am, I guess, by asking that. So I know there's going to be people, you and I, we share a love of process mapping. We've talked about that in the past. But there's going to be people who are looking at this and are going to be thinking you know, Michael, why, why do I need to get this out on paper? Shouldn't I just import directly from Trello to ClickUp and start dragging things around? Like, why do. Why is this step, like, what is this doing?

It forces you to look at everything and figure out whether you need it or not and when you can put things into boxes. Because if you transfer things, the problem with transitioning over from one and just doing wholesale copying is that you could copy mistakes. And that's a big issue. Right? You can copy bad processes. You could copy repeated steps that are just not needed. And so in order for you to get to a spot where you've got a clean place, you kind of need to go through these. I think maybe somebody else wouldn't. And not just transfer it over, because as you start doing it, you'll start asking yourself questions and the steps, you're like, do I really need to do this five times? Do I really need to have this approved by this person? Or can I put something in there? Is that. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I couldn't really. Or I couldn't agree more with that sentiment, especially, I mean, you're doing it with your partner here. So I imagine there's just that honesty of, are you sure? There's so much value in that question. And I'm also curious. These, these buckets that you came down to, I know there's going to be people watching this thinking, oh my gosh, those must be statuses, those must be dropdowns, and trying to, again, rush the through this. But what I like about your approach here and just seeing the phases is that you're very, you're taking your time, it's very meditative on each step. How did you end up determining what these kind of sections would be for yourself?

I. It wasn't me. Like, I, I always say, my mantra when I'm working with anybody who's trying to build a process or work on a process is I, I don't make the process. I don't come up with these words. The person I'm working with does. So I group them in things that I think sound the same. Like, because I've worked with a lot, I'm like, these all feel to me to be about the same. What do you want to call them? And then she would call them, oh, I think this is pitch and pre pitch, or I think this is actually the meat and potatoes of my review work. And I'm like, great, let's call it that. Let's put them in that bucket that way, they're also invested, especially when you're working with a creative, I have to say, you have to get them invested in the process of making this workflow because if you don't, they won't feel like they own it. And that is a huge hurdle to get over when you want to bring them into a system. So understand. I haven't even introduced her yet to ClickUp. I just want to talk about these things so that she gets sort of used to the idea of going, oh, yeah, that's my word. Reviewer. Yes. I said that planning is going to do those things and she has the chance to change those and make them whatever she wants.

I love it. And I don't want to keep us too far from seeing what this all comes into. But I have to ask, you mentioned at the beginning, you know, this is a solo creative you're working with who you know very well.

Yes.

Is that making it easier or harder than, say, a team like a company that you might work for?

It's actually really weirdly hard. I've never done it with because I have my own stuff. I just have my own way of doing things and I look at it all the time and play with stuff. And when you work with the team, there's a kind of energy in the room that's like it's a negotiation. You know, you're all there to try to negotiate with one another, but it's tough because there's no one else to bounce ideas off except for me. And she doesn't even have another person that does review work in the thing and go, oh, really? You do that? Why do you do that? I do this other thing and use this tool. And that happens really naturally inside of a team of at least three people, assuming that one of them isn't me. So maybe four people. And there's a lot of great ideas that happen inside of teams, and it happens much quicker because they want to get to a spot, they want to be heard. They also want to accept other people's ideas so that their ideas become accepted. I think that with a single person, you have to get them. It's a different challenge. You have to get them over this idea of doing things the way they've done it. It's like a person of one inside of a bank. And I call them tribal knowledge Owners and banks are notorious for having these people in their organizations. And if. If Jane Smith goes on vacation, the whole thing comes to a stop. And it's because Jane does things a particular way and Jane has her systems and she's the only one that knows these systems. So it's kind of like working with a person that's a solo tribal knowledge owner inside of a big organization. And I didn't do that very often in the past either.

Interesting. I didn't mean to pull you on that side note there, but I think those of us who are working on this, whether by ourselves or we're on a team doing this, I think we could listen to some of the things Michael just said here and try to think about how we're coming into these conversations or if we're trying to do this alone, pull in the coworkers. I mean, I'm hearing some lessons learned here that I think will be insightful, but. Okay, so how did you, where did you go from here? Was this, this is when you started to build some things out? Now that was just packed with golden nuggets, wasn't it? Even in this small clip, which was so hard to trim down, Michael had so much to share about how you could simplify a process. Whether you're working with by yourself, with a team, with a client. There's so many takeaways here and I know this is just the beginning. So those of you who are members, I just want to prompt you one more time to log into your membership portal, watch the full length interview and see the behind the scenes of what this turns into inside ClickUp. For those of you who aren't members of ProcessDriven membership, this is your chance to rectify this. You can use the link in the description below to join us inside the processdriven membership. And once you're in there, you'll be able to see the full length interview from Michael as well as other folks in the membership, plus our step by step ClickUp, setup course, our templates, our resources, and all the other good stuff that happens inside the membership. Now, just to take us out, I want to say a giant thank you to Michael, which I kind of already did, so let's just play that clip. Thank you so much, Michael. I feel like, like I said before, we could just go on and on about this and I just want to pick your brain and I know we could chat all day, but I want to just wrap up here and ask you, for folks watching this, let's think about community members. Would you be open to them, you know, reaching out if they had some questions about this or want to maybe lament about Integromat or Automations? Would that be okay if people were to reach out to you?

Absolutely. I love talking with people and helping solve problems. So, yeah, absolutely. If you want to talk to me, the easiest way to get to me through business is literally through LinkedIn. And I also have a website which I've just recently put up and edited. So I'm hoping it works out well because this will be my third or fourth edit. So please reach out. There's a contact form on skill fillingmybeans.com and that's where I, you know, get people who might need help either with management or processes or both.

Alright, well, that brings us to the end. Thank you guys so much for watching and until next time, you know what I'm going to say. Enjoy the process.