Getting a project started is easy. But when that perfectly organized seed of a project grows into a tangled web of tasks and people, things are all too likely to go off the rails. Stacey Nash knows this all too well: as the VP of Marketing at Aurea, she manages a 100% distributed marketing team, and for a while, they were managing without much more than email.

Before Flow, Aurea’s distributed team of writers, designers, and producers would meet once a week to set priorities. “We met every Monday and would review a spreadsheet list of projects, and then we would send a summary email of all actions that were due for the week,” explains Stacey.

Doling out action items was easy enough, but things broke down throughout the week.

There was no easy way to check in and make sure that work was progressing without sending another email, and it didn't allow for shifts and changes in priorities — which can happen fast in our business.

— Stacey Nash, VP of Marketing, Aurea

When Stacey moved her team to Flow, instantly the process improved. Everyone was working in the same virtual place, and members of her team could immediately give feedback on work in progress. The workflow was visible to everyone, and getting a status check was as simple as a glance. The mental weight of feeling like things were slipping through the cracks was immediately lifted.

I stopped waking up in the middle of the night wondering if something was getting done, and if it would be on time. I can take a look at my notifications in Flow and see what the team is producing as it happens — and I don’t have to interrupt anyone.

— Stacey Nash, VP of Marketing, Aurea

They’ve adapted the flexibility of the Flow platform to create their own trick, “pass the task”. Because their team has so many individual contributors, passing the task keeps everyone clear on exactly what needs their attention. “Rather than create 10 tasks for something that is 10 sequential steps, we will create the task and pass it around to the person responsible as the task progresses,” says Stacey.

Aurea has cat-like agility, so they need Flow to keep them lean and ready in order to always land on their feet. They think less about how stuff gets done, and they just get stuff done.

Stacey puts it simply: “Flow’s just how we do things.”