What is Asynchronous Communication in Remote Work?
In this article, let’s discuss a remote work term that's becoming much much more mainstream and why it's the most important thing for you to acquire as a skilled remote worker.
Let's talk about asynchronous communication.
What is Asynchronous communication?
In simple terms, it's sending a message without immediate expectation for a response.
Some examples:
Email.
Text Message.
Slack Message.
These are modes of communication where the latency could be a few minutes, hours, or days.
To help put in perspective, synchronous communication is communication with an immediate expectation of response -- like so:
In-person communication, meetings for example.
Or if you're on the phone with someone.
Basically, the flow of conversation would get awkward if you didn't respond in the moment.
what does Asynchronous communication have to do with remote work?
The best and most successful fully-remote companies in the world have this in common:
They put a huge focus on intentional asynchronous work.
For remote teams that are distributed throughout the world, where it's impossible to have all members online simultaneously, asynchronous communication is critical to success. As more companies have transitioned to remote work, they are looking at fully distributed companies like Doist, GitLab, Buffer, and Remote for guidance on how to deploy this type of work style.
Employees love it too because it's a style of work that shows trust, encourages work/life balance, and gives people more freedom to design their day as long as they get their work done. The key here is having a culture that promotes asynchronous work, and having the processes in place to ensure employees understand what's expected of them.
Why is Asynchronous communication in remote work so important?
Work is best done without distractions. One of the huge pushes for remote work is the elimination of the stupid water cooler talk, the person coming to your desk to bullshit, and a range of other frustrating interruptions that lead to unproductive days.
As the world has gone remote, the need for the company-wide skill of async communication has skyrocketed. Here's why based on an article I came across from my friends at Doist.
Employees are happier with more control over their workday.
People learn to communicate in a higher quality fashion with less back-and-forth.
Deep work becomes the default.
Automatic documentation creates greater transparency because most communication is in writing. These conversations can be referenced later. Creating processes becomes easier.
Time zone equality, no one is at an informational disadvantage because of the time zone they are in. You don't need everyone available for a stupid conference call or Zoom meeting to do something that could've been done over email.
How do you start working asynchronously?
In an article by GitLab, there's an amazing question that they ask:
"How would I deliver this message, present this work, or move this project forward right now if no one else on my team (or in my company) were awake?"
Asynchronous work is a simple concept: Do as much as you can with what you have, document everything, transfer ownership of the project to the next person, then start working on something else.
Buffer has a few best practices that I want to highlight that I find extremely helpful:
Clear processes and clear intentions.
Most things aren't urgent - know the difference!
Invest in your writing and re-read everything you're going to send.
Communicate everything someone needs upfront.
The key is taking out this gut reaction to schedule meetings and instead buckle down, take on the work, and deliver something of high quality that can push the ball forward.
At its core, async communication is good documentation that doesn't require the recipient to be available.
And as GitLab eloquently states, there needs to be a standardized method of documentation first because otherwise, you're leaving team members to determine their own methods which create an absolute shit show. GitLab and my friend Darren Murph over there have the most comprehensive async documentation guides and resources so make sure to check those out.
asynchronous work is the future (and the now)
Yes I believe async is the future of work, and those that master this skill of communicating in this way will be hand and foot over everyone else.
That said, it will never replace synchronous, which is still needed for that human element, and for certain types of brainstorming and message delivery. What we're going to see over the next few years, is that more and more meetings will be taken off calendars, and more and more async styles will be implemented. This is especially true with globalization, the rise of the remote workforce and the intentionality companies have to have to create a remote culture.
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