Remote-first and the battle for (a)synchronous communication
Async is all the rage. And it may be leaving out the extroverts who love to talk.
You’ve probably heard about asynchronous communication. Even if you are only adjacent to any type of conversation about remote work, “async” will pop up sooner rather than later.
Basically, meetings are the devil and asynchronous communication is the new catechism.
And I get it - if you work in one of those 10-meetings-a-day companies, then going completely asynchronous sounds like the dream!
As usual, clickbait wants you to think in binaries. It’s either endless meetings or no meetings at all.
Either your headphones merge with your head or you’ll discuss everything in writing and won’t ever hear anyone’s voice ever again.
What if there’s a meeting middle ground that allows you to both keep track of decisions and add some human interaction to your day?
The real question is: Why are so many people so upset about meetings? What problems does asynchronous communication try to solve? And which of these problems actually do apply to your team?
Asynchronous communication facilitates discussions across time zones
A lot of companies who are async-first are also completely distributed. If your team stretches from Canberra to New York or from Tallinn to San Francisco there won’t be any suitable meeting time ever.
If your work hours do not overlap, it makes sense to move as many discussion as possible into asynchronous formats. Whether you use Google docs, Notion, Loom or Slack voice messages - asynch helps everyone to have “normal” work hours.
If your work hours overlap significantly - you have more options.
You can have more calls if everyone is in a similar timezone. Some of those calls can even be spontaneous, like a Slack huddle to clarify an answer to a question on Slack.
And if you do have time zone overlaps, you probably should have more calls than a completely distributed company. Because meetings that are run efficiently can be really helpful for those involved.
And that’s the thing: meetings aren’t the enemy. Mindless meetings without a purpose are the problem.
So, if you can have meetings, how can you make sure to make them count?
Stay away from recurring meetings (unless they are your team’s 1on1s - those should be weekly or biweekly no matter what).
Include an agenda an an option to share opinions before the meeting (e.g. if someone can’t participate).
Make the meeting as interactive as humanly possible. Yes, you may have to actually learn how to facilitate meetings.
And, most importantly, make sure that you publish/broadcast all decisions that were made to those who didn’t attempt. This is your repository of past decisions to come back to when next year someone has the same idea yet again.
There’s even software that can help streamlining your meetings, e.g Verbally. Here’s an interview with the founder.
Meetings are a tool. And just like a hammer you can use them to destroy or to make the environment more enjoyable - for everyone.
That’s the other advantage of (some) meetings: it allows you to actually speak to your colleagues. Adding some social banter at the beginning or the end of meetings can make all the difference for the extroverts and very social people on your team.
Just because you hate meetings and want to get to less than three meetings per week does not mean that everyone in your team feels the same. Finding the balance can be tricky, and it is definitely possible.
It’s a team effort though: by making most meetings optional and creating a proper documentation practice you can give more agency back to your team members.
There you go - now cancel some meetings, decline to participate in some others, and add an agenda to what remains. You can do this.