You know what everyone on your team is working on when all work is visible in one place: every task has one owner, a status and a date, each task is tied to a goal, and you look at a view of that list instead of asking people. If the answer to "what is Sara working on?" requires a message to Sara, the work is not visible yet.
Why this is harder than it should be
Most leads know roughly what their team does. The trouble is the details: who picked up the new request, whether the proposal is waiting on legal, why two people seem to be doing the same thing.
This is a common problem, not a personal failing:
- In Atlassian's 2024 survey of 5,000 knowledge workers, 50% said they had found out, only after starting a project, that another team was already working on the same thing. 56% said teams at their company plan and track work in different ways (Atlassian State of Teams, 2024).
- Asana counts "chasing the status of work" and "managing shifting priorities" as work about work, the coordination that takes time away from skilled work (Asana, 2026). In its 2022 survey, managers spent 62% of their day on this kind of coordination (Asana Anatomy of Work Index, 2022).
- Asana's research also found that only 43% of workers are clear on their organization's objectives for the year (Asana, 2026).
The cause is usually the same: work is spread across a project tool, chat threads, email and people's heads. No single view shows all of it.
What "knowing" actually means
You do not need to know every detail. You need to answer five questions at any moment without asking anyone:
- Who owns what? Every active piece of work has one named owner.
- What is in progress right now? Not what was planned, what is actually moving.
- What is late or at risk? Past or near its due date.
- What is blocked, and by whom?
- What is nobody working on? Unassigned work is where projects quietly slip.
If you can answer these five by looking, you know what your team is working on.
How to set it up
Step 1: Put all work in one list
Choose one place where tasks live. Requests that arrive in chat or email get turned into a task there, with an owner, before anyone starts. Work that is not in the list does not exist for planning purposes.
Step 2: Give every task one owner, one status and one date
"Team marketing" is not an owner. "Soon" is not a date. Use a short status set that everyone understands:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Not started | Owned and planned, not begun |
| In progress | Someone is actively working on it |
| Blocked | Cannot continue; note what or who blocks it |
| Done | Finished and, if needed, checked |
Step 3: Connect tasks to goals
A list of tasks tells you what people are doing. Linking each task to a goal tells you why, and shows which goals have no active work at all. Atlassian found that teams with clear goals were 18% more likely to be effective, and 70% of knowledge workers said fewer, more specific goals would make progress easier (Atlassian State of Teams, 2024).
Step 4: Build three views
- By person: what each person has in progress and due this week. This also shows overload.
- By goal: what work belongs to each goal and how much is done.
- Exceptions: everything late, blocked or unassigned. This is the view you check daily.
Step 5: Make updates part of the work
People keep a list current when updating it is faster than being asked. One click to change status. One sentence when something is blocked. Updates on the task, not in a side channel. How to Stop Chasing Status Updates From Your Team goes deeper on this.
Visibility without micromanagement
Visible work can feel like surveillance if it is used the wrong way. A few rules help:
- Look at outcomes, not activity. Check status and dates, not how many hours someone was online.
- Same rules for everyone, including the lead's own tasks.
- Use the view instead of interrupting. Microsoft's 2025 telemetry found that people are interrupted every 2 minutes during core hours by a meeting, email or notification (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025). Every "what are you on?" message adds one more. A visible list removes them.
- Act on exceptions only. If work is on track, leave people alone.
A daily five-minute check
| Look at | Ask | Action if yes |
|---|---|---|
| Unassigned work | Is something important without an owner? | Assign it or offer it to someone with capacity |
| Blocked items | Can I unblock it? | Make the call or connect the right people |
| Late items | Is the date still realistic? | Agree a new date or cut scope |
| Load per person | Is someone overloaded? | Move or pause work |
How Orakis does it
In Orakis, goals and tasks with owners, priorities, statuses and deadlines live in one workspace, next to team chat and company knowledge. The Team view shows a map of who works on which goal and where work is late or unassigned. A daily briefing on Home summarizes what moved and what needs you. The AI offers unassigned tasks to the right person based on recent work, current load and topic, and a person confirms. Orakis is a young product in closed beta; teams that need engineering-specific tracking such as sprints and releases are better served by a dedicated tool.
FAQ
How do I know what my team is working on without micromanaging? Look at a shared view of tasks, owners and statuses instead of asking people directly, and only step in on exceptions: late, blocked or unassigned work.
What about remote or distributed teams? The same system works, and matters more, because you can't see who is busy. Written status in one place replaces the information you used to pick up in the office.
What if people forget to update their tasks? Make updating take seconds, agree on one rule ("say it on the task before someone asks"), and use a view that shows tasks that have not moved. Peer visibility does most of the rest.