A ClickUp Champion is a singular point of contact in your organization who is the ultimate owner of your ClickUp instance.
They take ownership of:
- The system’s design
- Habits and behaviors of the team inside the system
- Being a ClickUp expert to answer the team’s questions
ClickUp champions usually have a project management background or have an overview understanding of all the processes the agency operates and the timelines in which these processes are completed for clients.
Regardless of the platform you run on, you need to have an internal champion – Monday champion, Asana champion, Teamwork champion, etc.
So, are you…
- A, an agency operator that has claimed the throne of [fill in the blank] champion?
- Or B, looking to hire or promote within to champion your project management platform?
Then read this post below to understand what makes a good internal champion and how to hire one.
What Makes A Successful ClickUp Champion?
Understanding & Empathy
The most successful ClickUp Champions have both a customer understanding and empathy for the team, but they are very organized and structured in their personalities.
- They understand the client journey and timeline
- They understand how the client sees the journey
- They’ve spoken with clients before to understand their perspective
- They understand the internal team and the members who have sat in the fulfillment seat – designers, writers, developers.
- And they understand the expectations of both of these sides and how they work together (+ the tension that can come from these expectations)
They are the glue that holds the demand side and the fulfillment side together.
By being the middle resource between these two parties and building and optimizing this process in ClickUp, they provide a single source of truth for everyone.
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A Variety of Experiences
Project Management
Although this is not required, and your champion does not need to be certified, they need to have a good mind for timelines, details, and deadlines.
You appoint a ClickUp Champion so that you know someone is watching the details. This person needs to be detail-oriented.
They need to have a nose for:
- Digging into something if it doesn’t look right
- Determining if something is a system or user failure
Customer Success or Account Management
A ClickUp champion should understand what the client is feeling.
- What are the pains that they experience?
- What motivates clients?
- What are they trying to accomplish?
This information can help a ClickUp champion manage timelines, prioritize and work through scheduling conflicts.
Adding in customer-facing experience brings forth empathy. A ClickUp champion cannot just be a taskmaster. They need to have people skills to work well with your internal team and clients.
Selection Criteria for Finding A ClickUp Champion
1) Not an Owner or Leadership Team Member
This is a non-negotiable selection criterion.
We have seen this fail too many teams. The owner or Director of Operations starts off with gusto, but once they get into the trenches, they push it to the side.
This is a very mundane task. It repeats every day. You need to manage and check in on the system every single day. This is not for every personality type.
The ClickUp Champion needs support from the leadership team, but the champion should NOT be someone on the leadership team.
2) Thick Enough Skin to Be a Referee
The ClickUp champion needs to be able to call out team members when they have violated the rules of engagement.
Ex. If you have a rule that every time a due date is moved, a comment must be left, this needs to be followed. If it’s not, the ClickUp champion needs to follow up with the team member.
The ClickUp Champion needs to be able to handle this healthy conflict with the team.
3) Comfort Managing Up
The ClickUp Champion needs to be comfortable calling out someone that’s higher up in the organization because they didn’t follow the rules of engagement.
The team won’t buy in if the leadership team doesn’t buy in.
The ClickUp champion holds leadership accountable.
4) General Understanding of How Team Processes Flow
They need to have a general understanding of how projects flow.
- How do we do our discovery projects?
- How do we do our implementations?
- How do we organize our retainers?
They need to understand the machine behind this and how projects flow.
- What departments, teams and roles are involved?
- How are tasks assigned?
- How is workload managed?
- How are assignees setup?
Understanding this will help them know how everything flows together so that they can be the glue.
5) Capacity To Spend Time in The Role
Team size and client load will impact the amount of time it will take.
This could potentially be a full-time role depending on team size.
For most agencies, this can take 20-30% of an account or project manager’s time. But it cannot be someone that is overloaded. It takes daily time to do daily, weekly and monthly roundups.
6) Analytical Minded
A ClickUp Champion should be analytically minded.
Can they look at a spreadsheet and understand the data?
They don’t need to be excel wizards, but they need to be comfortable looking at data and drawing conclusions.
Ex. “After looking at the timesheet, I’ve noticed that over the last few months we are spending way too much time on SEO. We either need to charge more or build a more efficient process.”
7) Innovative & Tech Savvy
They don’t need years of experience using the tool, it is important that they are a quick learner when it comes to software systems.
- Do they have curiosity?
- Do they want to learn and figure things out?
- Do they experiment?
It’s a huge bonus when you have a ClickUp Champion that’s constantly able to figure out how to make things work better and uncover the hidden gems within the tool.
- Do they have a ClickUp sandbox to test different features?
- Are they experimenting with automation platforms to automate tasks?
- Are they researching best practices and tips to improve 1% everyday?
They respect the process, but want to challenge the process to see how things can be improved.
What Does the ClickUp Champion Do?
Once the system has been built, implemented, and launched, the ClickUp Champion will focus on four main work cadences – daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly – when holding the system together.
- The daily and weekly tasks focus on activity/inputs into ClickUp – what goes into the system.
- The monthly and quarterly focuses on the outputs – outcomes from the activity.
- How do we make better decisions moving forward based on the data that we’ve collected?
1. Daily Spot Check
Are people following the rules of engagement that we’ve set?
If no, follow up with the specific team members to support and hold them accountable.
Support the team.
“I noticed you didn’t track your time here. Can I help show you how to do that?”
Hold the team accountable.
“I noticed you didn’t track your time here. I know that you know how to do this, so it looks like you did this to cut corners. That’s not okay.”
2. Weekly Roundup
This is largely focused on trends, planning and project management.
- What are the recurring trends that we are seeing here and do I need to take this to someone else?
- Or this person is over capacity and we need to look at rescheduling or supporting them with their work.
3. Monthly and Quarterly Analysis
On a monthly cadence, the ClickUp Champion should be looking at profitability by client, project, department, service line, etc.
They are collecting all of the weekly roundup reports, capturing common themes, drawing conclusions, and presenting their insights and ideas to the leadership team.
This data need to be evaluated and analyzed by the leadership team.
- Capture data
- Pull reports
- Analyze trends
- Develop insights
- Suggest improvements
- Plan the attack
- Optimize the system
- Empower the team
- And repeat
Additional ClickUp Champion Work
As the ClickUp champion works through their spot checks, roundups and reports they should also:
Managing User Engagement
The ClickUp champion needs to encourage, train, correct and coach the team on their engagement with the system.
Ex. Is there a specific process template in the system that has unnecessary tasks in it?
Monitoring the System
Utilizing preset views or dashboards to ensure:
- Tasks are being placed in the correct location
- Tasks are being created from templates
- Adhoc tasks that are not from templates are built with the correct custom fields
- Work is linked to the budget, etc.
Maintaining the System
As the system is monitored, the ClickUp Champion will either:
- Perform actions to correct or enhance something in the system and then train the team on that enhancement.
- Or engage with specific team members that may not be following the rules of engagement.
General ClickUp Knowledge
The ClickUp Champion will be the person who knows ClickUp best, grasps overall functionality, and knows how and where to get answers. They will be the person to whom others go with questions about ClickUp functions and features.
They will stay on top of ClickUpdates, platform improvements, and occasional changes.
They are curious, engaged and always seeing where they can improve the system.
How Do You Find a Good ClickUp Champion?
Crafting The Job Description
This is your sales pitch to bring high-quality candidates through the door. Sell your company, and sell the role.
You should always include:
- What it’s like to work at your agency (add a personal video in the job description)
- The impact that the role will have on your agency
- Your ClickUp Champion will impact employee satisfaction, client retention, revenue and profit
If you decide to hire an outsider and not promote within, your job description will flow similarly to that of a project manager.
They should have in-depth experience in maintaining timelines and assignments on tasks.
Secondly, your job description should include ClickUp experience. It’s best to find someone who:
- Has experience with the platform
- Has helped implement the platform
- Has trained others on the platform
The Interview Process
When you build a pool of candidates and are ready to begin interviewing to decide the best fit, it’s best to test their skills and understand how they think.
Show and tell exercise – have them document a process they use in their real lives and have them train you and how they do it.During this exercise, look for two things:
- How they communicate through it and teach their process?
- How much detail do they put into it? Do they look at due dates, time estimates, dependencies, etc.
Hire a ClickUp Champion. It’s Worth It.
Every agency with a project management platform needs an internal champion in place. They are the glue that holds everything together. It’s valuable.
Need help finding a ClickUp champion? Get in touch with us.
