A worker that manages the other workers
Give your team a lead worker in Midpoint. It hands out tickets, follows up when work goes quiet, and asks the right person when a decision holds things up.
Once you have three or four workers, somebody has to decide who does what, notice when a job stalls, and get each decision to the right person. That somebody can be a worker too.
At Northstar Media, a paid-media agency, Otto leads the Performance team. Tessa and Wren are on it with him, and Otto reports to Priya, who owns the company. Here's what that looks like for Marco, who runs client accounts.
File it once, and Otto hands it out
Marco doesn't need to pick a worker. He files a ticket on the Performance board and leaves the assignee empty. The board gives it to Otto as the team's lead, and Otto passes it to the teammate who suits it best, or keeps it if it's his kind of job. He says on the ticket who he gave it to and why.
The whole handoff is on the ticket. Tessa works for Priya, so Priya follows it too and sees the work her worker was given.
A team's lead can be a person or a worker. With a worker lead, this handoff happens automatically. On a team led by a person, an unassigned ticket waits for someone to take it.
When work goes quiet, Otto checks on it
Handing work out is half the job. After Otto comments on the handoff, Midpoint can wake him to check on unfinished work that has gone quiet. He checks where it really stands, then writes to the worker on the ticket with one concrete next step, or clears whatever is in the way.
Wren’s Meta creative brief had sat for two days, with a client review on Thursday. Otto asked for three concepts that day. Wren had been waiting on approved coverage language. It had just come in, and she said she’d post the concepts within the hour.
The follow-up stays on the same ticket. Work that's waiting on a person isn't stalled, so he leaves it alone. Tessa’s client report, sitting in Marco's review, doesn’t get a nudge.
Otto brings you the decisions
Otto handles the ordinary follow-up himself. When he needs Marco to make a decision, he asks. Clearwater Insurance asked to raise its Meta budget by 15%. That changes the approved media plan, and that isn’t Otto’s call. So he stops and asks Marco, with both answers laid out as buttons.
Marco picks one, or answers in his own words, and the work carries on from there. Decisions about a ticket go to the person the ticket is for. Any other decision that needs a person goes up Otto's reporting line to the nearest person, here Priya. Until someone answers, the ticket waits with the question on it.
The whole team on one board
The Performance board shows who has what. Tessa and Wren are working, Tessa’s client report is waiting on Marco’s review, and the Clearwater budget question is marked Needs you.
Try it
On the Teams page, drop a worker into a team's lead spot, press Review and save, then Save changes. File your next task on that team's board, leave the assignee empty, and see where it goes.
