This meeting featured Kieran Doy, Head of Solutions Engineering at Notion EMEA, sharing in-depth insights on successful Notion adoption for teams and enterprises.
Discussion topics included common organizational traps, the importance of change management, best practices for rollout, and the often underestimated role of structure and champion networks.
The conversation also highlighted internal Notion workflows, the value of hands-on learning, and top actionable recommendations for maximizing team productivity.
Attendees included Kieran Doy and an interviewer experienced in Notion consulting.
Action Items
None specified with owners or due dates in this transcript.
Kieran’s Background and Solutions Engineering at Notion
Kieran detailed his career trajectory from environmental science through IBM, Oracle, Slack, and finally to Notion, where he leads solutions engineering in EMEA.
Explained that solutions engineers sit between product, sales, and customer teams, focusing on aligning product capabilities with customer needs and driving adoption.
Outlined the four key decisions customers must make when buying Notion: commercial, value, legal, and security—with solutions engineering driving all except legal.
Introducing and Explaining Notion
Notion is best described to new users as a single platform that condenses the functions of multiple productivity tools (notes, tasks, calendars, planning) into one interconnected system.
For businesses, Notion acts as a central knowledge hub, connecting structured (tasks, projects) and unstructured (notes, brainstorming) information, thus reducing workplace stress and fragmentation.
Pitching Notion is most effective when demonstrated interactively; the product’s value becomes clear when users experience its functionality.
Challenges in Notion Adoption
Typical adoption starts with one passionate user or team; as growth occurs and more teams get involved, structure often breaks down unless proactively managed.
The most common struggles are lack of planning, absence of team space structures, and missing centralized databases, which can erode the benefits of Notion.
A key meta-challenge is the organizational shift from private-first to public-first work—requiring substantial change management and cultural adjustment, varying across regions.
Change Management and Implementation Best Practices
Change management must be “all carrot, no stick”—users need to see clear personal and team benefits to adopt new workflows.
Successful implementations start with interviewing multiple stakeholders about their daily work and pain points (without initially referencing Notion), then designing solutions that directly address those issues.
Avoid top-down mandates; instead, empower influential, curious, and “builder” users to champion adoption, and provide them with deep enablement and rewards.
Structuring Rollouts and Enabling Users
Build a user hierarchy: sponsor (executive), admins (system owners), champion network (train-the-trainer group), and then general users.
Invest time in selecting and developing the right champions—this phase is often rushed but is critically important for scalable, sustainable adoption.
There must be continuous support, opportunities for regular feedback, and mechanisms for general users to advance and provide input.
Typical Workflows and Quick Wins for Companies
The highest-leverage workflow for most organizations is connecting individual work to team tasks, department projects, and overall company objectives through relational databases.
Establishing this foundational structure is transformative for visibility, accountability, and employee motivation.
Notion is especially powerful for roles needing documentation and cross-functional collaboration; marketing teams, agencies, and technical teams often see immediate benefits.
Internal Notion Usage and Workflow Optimization
Kieran’s team targeted being the best internal users of Notion in EMEA, identifying pain points in their existing processes (interacting with sales, tracking requests) and consolidating workflows within Notion to reduce complexity, increase speed, and minimize errors.
Emphasized the importance of understanding and mapping out real processes—using tools like sticky notes to visualize steps before building in Notion—and focusing on impactful changes over beautiful but non-functional pages.
Onboarding and Learning Notion
New hires at Notion are expected to demonstrate Notion skills during hiring and are encouraged to learn by building (not borrowing templates).
Mistakes are tolerated and expected as part of the learning curve; psychological safety and hands-on experimentation are prioritized.
Templates are useful for inspiration, but deep understanding comes from constructing systems oneself.
Top Best Practices and Advice
Every team should add action-oriented buttons at the top of their team space to enforce correct process flows and create template-based entries in their databases, streamlining user experience and maintaining order.
Focus first on foundational practices (like buttons and structure) before advancing to more complex features like formulas; these deliver the biggest impact.
Success with Notion—and any workplace tool—depends on proper structure, continued stewardship, and attention to the people side of change, not just the technology.
Decisions
Adopt a champion-based, structured rollout for Notion implementations — to ensure sustained adoption and maximize business value, rather than quick, top-down deployments.
Prioritize connecting individual, team, and company goals within Notion — as the most transformative foundational step for any organization.
Open Questions / Follow-Ups
None explicitly mentioned; ongoing best practices and workflow adaptations were discussed as continuous improvement areas.