Async communication

February 15, 2023

A lot of our communication is done synchronously. The people doing the communication have to be present at the same time in the same place (either virtually or in person). That's why we have meetings.

While this is the most common way for communication to flow, it is not scalable, and it's not conductive to a remote work environment. People who are not actually a part of these talks are missing out.

That's why I always try to shift to async communication, because with little extra effort I can still have synchronous communication (as it can still happen), but also allow for async communication and its non-ephemeral nature, better transparency, and knowledge-sharing attributes.

Let's start with Slack message, here's an example of synchronous communication:

Joe: "Hey Bob, are you there?"

... 15 minutes passes

Bob: "I am here, what do you need?"

... 15 minutes passes

Joe:: "I need the latest english demo report"

... 15 minutes passes

Bob: "Here it is: [link]"

... 15 minutes passes

[communication completed, issue resolved]

4 communication hops, 1 hour of time. Frustrating for the sender as well as the receiver. While this is a contrived example, it's a pretty common way how we communicate.

Before we do the async version, some async rules:

• it has to be written (or recorded) -> that ensures its long-lasting
• it has all the needed context -> that ensures that there are as few communication hops as possible
• it allows for others to respond at their time -> that ensures it's actually async

Now the async example:

Joe: "Hey Bob, I'm doing a presentation in english for a potential client on Friday, and I need an english demo report so I can include it on my powerpoint presentation. Do we have a demo report in english that I can use?

... 15 minutes passes

Bob: "Here's the demo report: [link]. We also have links to already existing powerpoint presentations ([link]), and make sure that you use the powerpoint template I created! ([link]).

... 15 minutes passes

[communication completed, issue resolved]

What changed?

We added additional context on the timing and the nature of our request (that told the other person how urgent it is). This also allowed the other person to respond with additional information that could prove useful to us (the additional template link). Because this is written down, OTHER people not part of our discussion will know that there's a client presentation on Friday, and that we have template resource that they can use. We just shared a lot of information with everybody in the company. Everybody became smarter.

It is a simple communication change, but can help so much when doing remote work.