Asana's CEO lets AI agents manage his inbox, monitor performance, and track rivals

• Dan Rogers, CEO of Asana, regularly taps the work-oriented AI agents his company offers its users.
• He said he’s learned that the bots may need detailed instructions to provide real value.
• Workplace agents differ from personal ones since they’re trained in institutional knowledge, said Rogers.

Like many CEOs, Asana’s Dan Rogers uses what his company sells. That means letting AI agents steer his workday.

Asana makes a platform for connecting all work across a business, and it expanded in 2024 to let users collaborate with AI agents. Rogers, 49, took the top job the following year, and now regularly taps the bots to manage everything from his calendar and inbox to customer relationships and engineering priorities.

His routine is a modern-day approach to the problem that led former Facebook engineering leaders Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein to found Asana in 2008: freeing people to spend less time coordinating work and more time doing it.

Rogers said work-oriented agents differ from those people use at home for tasks like making hotel reservations and meal planning. They’re programmed to understand an organization’s institutional knowledge, coordinate across people and systems, and safely handle sensitive data.

Still, Rogers said such agents can take some effort to bear fruit. For example, a competitor-tracking agent initially annoyed him by flagging information he didn’t care about. Only after Rogers gave it more precise instructions did it become useful.

“Some of these agents do require work to get them where you want them to be,” he told Business Insider.

Here’s a look at the AI agents that Rogers uses:

The productivity team

One scans his Gmail inbox for messages requiring immediate action, prioritizing those related to his goals and his team’s projects. Another reviews his calendar to make sure he’s spending his time on what matters most to him, and it alerts him if he’s not. The third reviews meeting transcripts for new commitments Rogers has made and updates that should be added to existing tasks.

“I want to be spending my time according to my priorities, and not willy-nilly based on the random things that come in,” he said.

The customer whisperer

This agent reviews Asana’s customer database to identify matters the company should know about, such as if a business has delayed renewing its subscription to the company’s platform. It also digs up complaints and requests that customers post online.

Rogers said he checks in with the agent about once a week and that the information it surfaces helps him decide which customers to approach. The goal is to address their concerns before they become bigger problems.

“I can be very proactive,” he said.

Although Rogers didn’t create the agent, he said others can customize it, including how they receive its findings and what sources it searches. The agent checks with its creator before incorporating changes that could benefit other users.

The sales coach

Rogers said he checks the agent’s activity daily, not so much to get answers himself, but to see what salespeople are struggling to understand. If lots of employees are asking about a new pricing model, for example, that’s a sign the company needs to do a better job explaining it, he said.

The business analyst

With this agent, Rogers monitors Asana’s performance, including sales results and its progress on signing up new customers. It pulls information from internal systems and turns it into reports and dashboards covering several key business metrics.

Previously, Rogers said he might have had to ask the CFO or a business intelligence team for that information. Now he can get it himself. Because the agent handles sensitive company information, Rogers said Asana restricts what data it can access and what actions it can take without human approval. “Security is paramount,” he said.

The competitive-intelligence analyst

Rogers uses this agent to monitor rival software companies, tracking their product announcements and what people say about them on social media. It produces daily briefings, which he said he typically reviews every three or four days.

The agent also communicates with another agent used by Asana’s chief product officer. If a competitor introduces a new feature, the two agents can compare it with Asana’s existing or planned offerings and flag anything that might warrant a change to the company’s product road map.

Rogers said the agents exchange information independently, without requiring him or the chief product officer to initiate the conversations.

The engineering project manager

With a steady pipeline of products and features to develop, Asana has to make strategic decisions about how to deploy its engineering talent. That’s where Rogers’ engineering capacity agent comes in. It essentially answers the question: “How do we assign them to work on the right things?” he said.

For example, if engineers have spare capacity between product releases, the agent might suggest small tasks they could complete during that period.

Rogers also uses it to keep tabs on when customer-requested features might be built. “It gives me comfort,” he said. “I love seeing stuff shipping.”

The agent also scratches a curiosity itch. “I’m just nosy,” Rogers said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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