Part 1: Meetings are expensive
Many companies rely primarily on face-to-face meetings to make decisions.
However, this is costly to the company in a few ways:
- When each member has to take out time in their day to give attention to the issue at the same time, it’s costly.
- Discussions can be delayed because meetings are scheduled around each individual’s availability. Especially if your team is remote and globally distributed. Multiple timezones overlap making meetings more expensive and difficult to schedule.
- Team members experience Zoom or meeting fatigue. This causes the team’s productivity to decrease over time.
Some CEOs I coach use Google docs and Slack for async discussions. They empower their executive team to move away from solely relying on meetings. The results are below:
- Faster decision-making — When we don’t need to coordinate meetings, decisions can be made as soon as teammates read and comment, thus shortening the decision timeline.
- Decreased the number of meetings — Meetings can be either shortened or eliminated. This preserves each teammate’s calendar, leaving ample time for deep work or focus time.
- Live meetings are more efficient — The meetings you end up holding become more efficient because there are fewer decisions that are made during live syncs. Therefore, meetings become more focused and efficient.
Part 2a: What are the use cases of async discussions?
Here are the criteria for a great async discussion:
- It’s a Type 2 decision — A Type 2 decision is easily reversible. You can read Decision-Making for a more detailed definition of Type 1 and Type 2 decisions.
- It requires multiple people to provide their input — The more people involved, the more pre-read and pre-write can help. And if you have more than six people who are providing input, you probably have a terribly inefficient live discussion, which means async writing is even more important.
Part 2b: What are NOT great use cases of async discussions?
These characteristics make a discussion not great for async:
- It’s a Type 1 decision — Type 1 decisions are not reversible. They are “one-way doors”. You can read Decision-Making for a more detailed definition of Type 1 and Type 2 decisions.
- Constructive feedback to an individual or a team — Unless the feedback is 100% positive, it shouldn’t be given in an asynchronous format. Read more about our philosophy on Feedback.
- It may elicit emotional responses — Any topic that’s highly triggering or emotional is best done live in a meeting. Asynchronous communication doesn’t help you observe others’ immediate reactions and make them feel heard.
Part 3: How to set up a system of async discussions
We recommend two systems using Threads and Slack.
Using Threads Asynchronously for Decisions
🔑 We use Threads alongside our Issue / Proposed Solution template (group). Here’s an example.
Step 1: Create a discussion
I am the proposer and the decision-maker of an issue. I don’t want to wait until our next Coaching team sync to bring it up. I also don’t think it’s necessary to take up live time to discuss this issue. I am writing about an issue in the IPS format.
Step 2: Decide on a due date
On Threads, I pick a time and date I’d like my colleagues to respond by using Thread’s natively built function.
Step 3: Colleagues comment
I wait for my colleagues to comment and converse with them back and forth if needed. I’ll answer their questions, or ask them clarifying questions
Step 4: Make a decision
On the due date, I’ll evaluate if I have enough information to make a decision. If yes, I’ll mark a comment as a decision.
If I haven’t reached a decision, I will consider how to continue the discussion. It may useful to bring up the issue in a live meeting. If I bring it to the live meeting, it’ll take less time to reach a conclusion because the team already has context. Or, I can extend the deadline and continue in the comment section.
🔑 What I love about Threads is that it tracks all your decisions in a tab. So you don’t have to worry about losing the history and context of decisions.
Use Slack Asynchronously for Communication
A great use case for Slack is to create async channels with your direct report. This will help you triage your Slack messages to better manage your time.
Step 1: Create a private channel between you and each of your direct reports
This is an example of my channel with my manager, Regina Gerbeaux.
Step 2: Give your direct report verbal and/or written context
Here is a great example of how to set it up in Slack. Regina’s written context was so clear that she didn’t need to provide additional verbal context to me.
💡Bonus tip that I learned from Regina is to organize this channel in thread and comment format. It keeps the conversation clean and easy to flip up or down.
Step 3: Test it with new discussion topics
I recommend that you be the first active user of the system. Start to seed this channel with topics and tag your direct report to get adoption.
Step 4: Ask your direct report to try it with one other person
The best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Once your direct report starts to post discussions to your async channel, they are ready to share it. Ask the to set up a new channel with one of their direct reports.
Part 4: How do I teach my team this method?
It’s normal for you or your team to feel resistance to a new method.
We have a detailed write-up on how you can make the transition easier. Please read Transition: How to successfully transition a group to a new method.
I am only a historian of this method. I have to give all the credit to my team for being fearless proponents of async communications. Special thanks to Regina to pilot both Threads and Slack with our internal team. And to Alexis, Trishia, Matt, and Nate for consistently using Threads to make decisions. I also thank all of them for reading this doc and providing their feedback.
About the Author
Sabrina Wang is a CEO coach for extraordinary leaders of Series A to Unicorn companies. She is a founder, CEO, and operator who brings real-life experiences in building products and scaling revenue into her coaching. She is a writer, creative, and trained meditation teacher.
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