Workflow Optimization

How to Start the Year with Clean Workflows in monday.com

If you opened monday.com this January and felt a wave of overwhelm looking at your workspace, you're not alone. The reality is that workflows tend to accumulate over time—extra boards get created for "just this one project," automations multiply, and before you know it, your workspace feels more cluttered than organized.

The good news? A new year is the perfect time to reset. Workflow optimization isn't about perfection or overhauling everything overnight. It's about creating systems that actually work for you and your team, reducing friction, and setting everyone up to do their best work.

Let's walk through how to clean up your monday.com workflows in a way that's practical, sustainable, and tailored to how your team actually operates.

Why Clean Workflows Matter

Here's what we see time and again with our clients: messy workflows don't just waste time—they create stress. When team members can't find what they need, when they're unclear on process, or when they're constantly adapting to inconsistent structures, it takes a toll.

Workflow optimization is really about creating clarity. When your systems are clean and intuitive, your team spends less time navigating the tool and more time doing meaningful work. Projects move faster, communication improves, and honestly, work becomes less frustrating.

The research backs this up too. Knowledge workers lose significant time each week just searching for information or trying to figure out who can help them. That's time you could be spending serving your clients or growing your business.

Start with Understanding What You Have

Before you change anything, you need to see the full picture. Think of this as a gentle audit—you're simply getting clear on your current state.

Take some time to walk through your monday.com workspace and notice what's there:

Your boards and workspaces deserve a closer look. Which ones are your team actively using? Which ones were created for a specific project six months ago and haven't been touched since? There's no judgment here—this happens to everyone. Just start making notes.

Automations and integrations can be trickier to track because they work in the background. Go through each one and ask yourself: is this still serving us? Some automations that were helpful early on might now be creating notification fatigue or duplicating efforts.

Your views and dashboards should be giving you insights at a glance. If you're not actually looking at a dashboard regularly, or if it's not helping you make decisions, that's worth noting.

User permissions are easy to overlook, but they matter. Make sure people have access to what they need without creating unnecessary clutter in everyone's workspace.

A simple spreadsheet works well for tracking what you find. This becomes your baseline and helps you see progress as you optimize.

Create Consistency in Your Board Structure

One of the biggest sources of frustration we see is inconsistency. When every project board is set up differently, your team wastes mental energy just trying to understand the layout instead of focusing on the actual work.

The solution isn't rigidity—it's thoughtful standardization.

Build templates for recurring work. If you run similar projects regularly (client onboarding, campaign launches, quarterly reviews), create a template that captures your ideal workflow. Include the columns you need, set up your standard views, and build in the automations that make sense. This is workflow optimization in action—you're making it easier for future-you.

Establish simple naming conventions. You don't need a complex system, just consistency. Decide how you'll name boards, columns, and status labels, then stick to it. When everyone knows that "Due Date" always means the same thing across all boards, navigation becomes effortless.

Be selective with columns. More columns don't mean better organization—they often mean more confusion. For each column, ask: "Do we actually use this information to make decisions?" If the answer is no, consider removing it. Workflow optimization is as much about what you remove as what you add.

Tame Your Automations

Automations are powerful, but they can quickly get out of hand. The key is intentionality.

Start by reviewing what you've already set up. For each automation, ask yourself: What problem does this solve? Is it still working the way we need it to? Are the notifications helpful or just noise?

Here's a principle that serves our clients well: keep automations simple. Complex, multi-conditional automations might seem sophisticated, but they're harder to troubleshoot and maintain. When possible, break workflows into smaller, clearer automation recipes.

And here's something that often gets overlooked—document what your automations do and why they exist. This prevents you from accidentally creating duplicates and helps new team members understand your processes. It's a small step that makes ongoing workflow optimization much easier.

Before building custom automations, check if monday.com already has a pre-built recipe that does what you need. These integration recipes with tools like Slack, Gmail, or Zoom are tested and reliable.

Build Dashboards That Actually Help You

Your dashboards should be decision-making tools, not just pretty displays of data. The question to ask is: does this information help me take action?

Focus on metrics that matter to your specific role and goals. What a project manager needs to see is different from what an executive needs. Create dashboards for specific audiences rather than trying to make one dashboard serve everyone.

Use color intentionally. A consistent color scheme across your boards helps your team process information faster—red for issues that need attention, yellow for items in progress, green for completed work. Simple, clear, consistent.

Make Workflow Optimization a Habit

Getting your workspace clean is great, but keeping it clean requires building in some ongoing practices.

Schedule regular check-ins. We recommend quarterly reviews where you and your team spend an hour looking at your workflows together. What's working? What's frustrating? What could be simpler? This prevents the slow creep of inefficiency from building back up.

Create space for feedback. Your team members are living in these workflows daily—they know where the friction points are. Make it easy for them to share suggestions. Sometimes the best workflow optimization ideas come from the people doing the work.

Invest in training. Even beautifully optimized workflows don't help if people don't know how to use them. Take time to walk your team through your standards and why they exist. When people understand the "why," they're much more likely to maintain the system.

Document your processes. You don't need a manual for everything, but having clear documentation for how your team uses monday.com reduces confusion and helps new team members get up to speed faster.

Track What's Improving

Workflow optimization is ongoing, not a one-time project. You'll want to notice what's getting better.

Pay attention to how long projects are taking from start to finish. Notice whether your team is actually using the systems you've set up. Check whether your automations are triggering correctly. And most importantly, ask your team how the workflows feel. Are they easier to navigate? Less frustrating?

These indicators tell you whether your optimization efforts are actually making life better for your team.

Watch Out for These Common Missteps

As you clean up your workflows, here are a few things to be mindful of:

Not everything needs to be automated. Sometimes a simple, manual process is actually clearer and more flexible than an automation.

Don't create custom fields for every possible piece of information. Each additional column adds cognitive load. Stick to what you actually need.

Listen to your team's feedback. If they're telling you something isn't working, believe them. They're the ones using these systems day in and day out.

Involve people from different departments when you're optimizing shared workflows. What makes sense for one team might create problems for another.

Remember that optimization requires ongoing attention. Set it up, yes—but then continue to refine based on how your team actually works.

Your First Steps

Here's a realistic approach to getting started:

This week: Walk through your workspace and take notes. Just observe what's there without changing anything yet.

Next week: Archive boards you're not using. Consolidate where it makes sense. Start using consistent naming conventions for new boards and items.

Week three: Review your automations. Remove what's not working, simplify what you can, and test that everything triggers correctly.

Week four: Redesign one key dashboard based on what you've learned. Set up a recurring calendar reminder for your quarterly workflow review.

You don't have to do everything at once. Start with one board, apply these principles, and build from there.

Moving Forward

Clean workflows aren't about rigid perfection—they're about creating systems that support your team in doing great work. When your monday.com workspace is organized, intuitive, and aligned with how your team actually operates, work gets easier. Projects flow more smoothly. Your team spends less time frustrated and more time focused.

Workflow optimization is iterative. You'll continue refining as your business grows and changes, and that's exactly how it should be. The goal is progress, not perfection.

Start small this week. Pick one area to clean up. Notice what feels better. Then build on that momentum.

Your team will thank you, and you'll set yourself up for a more productive, less stressful year.

If you'd like support optimizing your monday.com workflows, we'd be happy to help. At Elevate Operations, we specialize in creating systems that actually work for how your team operates. Reach out and let's talk about what would make the biggest difference for you.