Lately I have been reading about Asynchronous Communication. It is an interesting topic to me because it plays an importantly role in working remotely. What is Asynchronous Communication? Here is a definition I really like:
Asynchronous communication is the art of communicating and moving projects forward without the need for additional stakeholders to be available at the same time your communique is sent.
Embracing Asynchronous Communication by GitLab
Examples of Asynchronous Communication
A number of activities we do regularly, falls into the category of Asynchronous Communication. In addition, advancements in technology have been making them easier to do. We do these activities to avoid long and draining meetings, control our focus, manage timezone differences, and work with more flexibility in how we allocate our working hours.
Collaborating in Documents
Google has made it easy for us to share documents with others. Software like Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Slides, make it easy for us to help one another in writing documents. These tools allow us to give others, editor or commenter access to documents we share with them. This is one form of Asynchronous Communication.
We do this when we want to get feedback for what we have written. We share the document and grant commenter privileges and our colleagues can read it at their own time and post comments on the document for us. We do not need to come together for a meeting, we just set expectations on when we want to get the feedback.
We do this when we write a document together with our co-workers. We share edit privileges and everyone contributes to the content being written. Again, we do not have to be in a meeting to do this together. Each contributor takes the responsibility of reading what has been written so far, checking the history of the document, editing what they want to change, and adding more content. Each person can do this at their own pace just as long as it falls within the expectations of the group on when they want to finish the document. In other cases, writing may never be “done”, the document evolves over time.
Chatting
Chatting can be a form of Asynchronous Communication. When you send a message with the expectation that it is ok if the recipient does not respond immediately, that is Asynchronous Communication. Sometimes people would also say that they are busy and they will get back to the chat message as soon as they can. This century, chatting has become a natural form of communication for everyone.
An important behavior to develop is managing when we respond to chats. You can manage the way you are notified by your chat tools. Working agreements can be set to have a shared understanding about responding to chats. You can set the appropriate status (like busy) in your profile. It is very important as well to just have only one chat tool used by the company / organization. You don’t want the burden of using and managing multiple tools.
Emails
I think it is unfortunate how email got a bad rep over the years. It doesn’t help that the marketing for collaboration tools commonly say “they should replace email”, “better than email”, “don’t bother with emails”. I consider email to still be an important form of Asynchronous Communication. I think if you manage your inbox properly you can leverage the advantages of using email.
I find emails helpful in collaborating on straightforward tasks or mini-projects. One recent experience I have in using emails for this kind of effort, is when my fellow Agile Coach and I were tasked with finding a good online Kanban tool. Our boss gave us the details of the task and instructions in an email. We did not have questions because it was all clear and the criteria for a “good tool” were well-defined. We were also given candidates to look at. I responded thru email to accept the task and give an estimate of how long it will take me to finish my assessment. My fellow Agile Coach responded in the same way. The next email we sent individually included the results of our assessments. From the results there was clearly a winner among the tools and we have made our pick. We did not meet, we just exchanged emails.
Training Videos
For teaching and sharing knowledge, training videos have become indispensable. The investment in making the videos can easily be paid off by the reusability of the training provided by the videos. It feels good when you have control over how you go through the training sessions. When you feel you need to review a part of the training, you can just rewatch it. Sure you lose the ability to interact with the trainer and other participants but most of the time you don’t need that. Most of the time you just need to digest the knowledge from the videos and apply it in your work. For internal trainings, the trainers could make time for conversations with the participants easily as they work together.
Pros and Cons of Asynchronous Communication
Let’s start with a list of advantages first:
- You can manage when you would allocate the time to digest information and make a response – as long as it is within the agreed expectations of people you work with
- You can avoid unnecessary meetings, freeing you from scheduling challenges and conflicts
- You can avoid disruptions – for you, as well as for your colleagues
- You have a recorded history of changes and exchanges, most tools you would use for Asynchronous Communication provides this feature
And then here are some disadvantages I can think of:
- Things will “fall through the cracks“ if you and your workmates don’t have discipline to follow-through with agreements on Asynchronous Communication
- You might misuse Asynchronous Communication
- Requires managing and organizing of numerous files, online resources, and tools
- You may forget to respond, participate and provide feedback
The disadvantages I listed can be overcome if you and your colleagues have a shared understanding of working agreements, ownership for the success of your group, and a great sense of responsibility.
Closing thoughts
There are many other forms of Asynchronous Communication besides the ones I have discussed here in this post. The ones I wrote about are the forms I commonly use. Perhaps on another post I’ll talk about the other forms I know of.
Asynchronous Communication does not mean to eliminate meetings. It helps us in avoiding unnecessary meetings and saving time and effort. It makes us ask if we really a need a meeting, and consider other forms of communication which may be better suited for the need that we have.
Remote Agility 