The TRUTH About Choosing the Right System (Without Forcing Your Team to Change How They Think)

Most new opportunities we get at Super Productive) start with a conversation about Systems.

It’s obvious why, apart from our positioning as an Asana Services Partner, software is visible and tangible.

You can point to the change and say, “see, we’re fixing it.” But besides that, it’s the core pressure point that touches everything else.

The Core of the Operation

In the Pressure Points framework, Systems maps to the core because it is foundational.

On the human body, core strength is what holds everything else in place. As I’m learning, from personal experience, building a solid core is a grind. It’s not particularly fun and you don’t get nearly the same rush as you get from feats of strength. But I’ve also learned that when the core is strong, those feats of strength are much easier. When your core is tired or weak, even seemingly simple movements become much harder.

The same is true for the body of an organization. Without a solid core, even the strongest individual parts start failing to carry the weight.

The Two Requirements Every System Has to Meet

When we’re pressure-testing a system, we look for two things.

1. Does it match the work?
2. Can it be configured so it works for every person who has to use it?

It’s not enough to pick a tool that seems “right,” and then try to force adoption through sheer will. You can’t fix the wrong tool for the job or the team member with more reminders, meetings, or threats. That’s not the right kind of pressure.

Some systems are specifically designed for certain types of work and some systems are genuinely more difficult for some brains to navigate.

If a system is going to resolve the pains of productivity, it should make the work easier. That means lowering cognitive overhead, and reducing repetitive work.

1. Systems Have to Fit The Work

Some systems are built for speed. Some are built for complexity. Some are built for prioritization. Some are built for visibility at scale.

Some stay high level. Some let you go all the way into the weeds with custom fields, automations, and multiple views.

Two of the tools we use most at Super Productive are Asana and Notion, largely because they can be simple when they need to be simple and deep when they need to be deep.

The goal isn’t to pick the trendiest tool. It’s to pick the one that makes the work easier for the people doing it.

2. Systems Have to Fit the People

Most productivity software is built for an imaginary ideal worker —– perfectly rational, endlessly adaptable, and technically fluent.

That kind of thinking is why most systems implementations go wrong. Designing for an ideal worker is always less effective than building around the actual humans using the system. Solving real productivity problems requires us to abandon the world of myth and see things as they really are.

When systems are rigid in ways that don’t match how people actually think, communicate, or process information, people build workarounds. They create shadow systems. The “official” system becomes a compliance exercise instead of a useful tool.

This is especially true for neurodivergent team members, who may process information in formats that don’t match the system’s defaults — preferring visual layouts over tables, or needing to see context before making sense of detail. A well-designed system accommodates different ways of navigating and contributing to it. A poorly designed system makes some people do extra work just to translate their brain into the tool.

Example: 2 People, 2 Preferences Needs

• On our own team, I like my work to show up as the two or three most important things I should focus on today. Anything more than that and my brain gets overwhelmed and I shut down.
• My business partner, Sarah, wants the full scope of the project. The detail helps Sarah feel grounded and confident.

Both approaches are valid. Both of us get a lot done. We just need different windows.

If a system can’t offer that, it’s a strong signal it’s going to make some people less effective than they could be.

That’s the standard we aim for: one shared system of record, with different ways to view and interact with it, so that the System helps more than it hurts.

When a system fits the work being done and the people using it, the pains of productivity start to melt away.

The Point of Systems is to Create Leverage

We believe a good system has to help you work more efficiently.

This has developed into a maxim at Super Productive:

“Anything you do the same way three times or more should be a template or an automation.”

• Templates create consistency.
• Automations create speed.

Together, they protect output and reduce burnout. They create room for higher-value and creative work. When the system handles the repeatable parts, people get to spend more time on judgment, creativity, relationships, and problem-solving.

Here’s how the Systems pressure point helps ease organizational productivity pain…

What Systems Is Actually Solving

Systems have clear and direct impacts across the six organizational pains.

Speed

• Input constraints help standardize work and reduce downstream errors.
• Automations and templates eliminate time wasted redoing the same steps.
• Integrations and clear handoffs reduce lag between “done” and “delivered.”

Consistency

• Templates and SOPs reduce variance by making the “right way” the default.
• Automation removes variables that show up when repeatable work is done manually.
• Input constraints standardize the inputs so the output doesn’t wobble based on who touched it.

Output

• When repeatable work becomes templates or automations, the team gets capacity back.
• Leverage comes from turning “we’ve done this before” into a workflow that runs the same way every time.
• The wrong system forces the team to keep doing the same work over and over, with no leverage.

Prioritization

• Automations create space to focus on important work instead of repetitive work.
• The right views let different roles see what they need: boards for execution, timelines/Gantt-style views for planning.
• A system that matches the work makes priority easier to see, because the structure mirrors reality.

Burnout

• Menial, repetitive work is often a direct path to burnout.
• Systems that template and automate the repeatable parts reduce the grind.
• When a system can’t be adapted for different cognitive styles, it adds cognitive overhead — and that exhaustion compounds.

Creativity / innovation

• The faster you can templatize and automate the repeatable parts, the more room people have to create.
• Bogging people down in repetitive compliance and data entry destroys creative energy.
• Systems that fit different brains make it easier to contribute ideas, not just complete tasks.

Systems Are a Leadership Responsibility

You can draw a straight line between Leaders and the criteria that shapes which systems get chosen and why. Unless Leaders stand for what their people need as a driver for investment in their tools, then failed system rollouts will continue to be more common than anyone would like.

The people closest to the work need to have a voice in choosing, designing, and updating the systems they use. They know, better than anyone, where the friction is.

It sounds obvious, but the best systems are the ones people actually use.

Putting It All Together

This is the fifth and final post in this series. Over these five posts, we’ve moved through the full Pressure Points framework: the six organizational pains, and the four pressure points that drive them.

Clarity. Collaboration. Utilization. Systems.

None of them exist in isolation. A team with strong Clarity but broken Collaboration will still feel the pains. A team with excellent Systems but poor Utilization will still burn people out.

The framework is most powerful when you use it to see the whole picture — to find where the pressure actually needs to go, rather than where it’s easiest to apply.

If you want to start mapping your own organization’s pain to the pressure points driving it, you can learn more and take the diagnostic at getsuperproductive.com/pressure-points.

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