Orientation & Authorship

This course is about building an operational system that can hold the full weight of your studio — the work, the decisions, the timelines, the communication, and the expectations that currently live in too many places, or live only in your head.

Asana is the medium we will use.
The system you build is the outcome.

Before you begin, it’s important to be clear about what kind of work this requires of you, and how to engage with this course so that what you build actually lasts.

What You’re Building

You are building operational architecture: a clear, shared structure that gives shape to how your studio works. This includes how projects move, how decisions are made, how information is stored, and how the team knows what matters, when.

In this system, Asana becomes the single source of truth — not just for tasks, but for process, communication, and institutional knowledge. It replaces scattered tools, parallel conversations, and informal memory with something legible, durable, and shared.

Your Role as the Principal

This is not a system you can delegate into existence.

If you do not adopt it fully, your team will not either — no matter how clearly you ask them to, or how well it is documented. Adoption follows belief, not enforcement.

You are the first user of this system.
You are also its author.

That means the structure has to make sense to you. You need to understand why things are built the way they are, what each part is responsible for holding, and how the pieces work together. The clarity your team experiences will mirror the clarity you bring to the build.

This is leadership work.

How to Use This Course

This course gives you structure, sequence, and examples — not instructions to follow blindly.

The examples exist to clarify architecture, not to dictate form. They are meant to help you understand what needs to exist, not how it must look. If something in this course does not make sense to you as the principal, do not implement it as-is.

A system that you don’t believe in will never be used well.

Likewise, if you discover a capability inside Asana while working through this course — something that sparks a better solution for your studio — you should use it. Understanding the tool deeply enough to make informed decisions is the point.

Authorship, Judgment, and Iteration

There is no “perfect” setup.

What you are building will evolve as your studio evolves. Iteration is not a mistake or a sign that you did something wrong — it is part of building a system that can actually hold real work over time.

The goal is not to get it right on the first pass.
The goal is to build something you can stand behind, explain, and reinforce.

If you can’t articulate why something exists in your system, it will eventually be ignored.

Sequence and Commitment

The order of this build matters.

Each layer of the system depends on the one before it: structure first, then visibility, then daily practice. Skipping ahead creates brittle systems that look complete but fail under pressure.

This is not a one-day or one-week process. You are investing time now so the system can carry work later.

Move through this course in order. Take the time to understand each layer before advancing. What you build here is meant to last.