WLP246 Championing Asynchronous Communication in Remote Teams
Today’s episode is about asynchronous communication - something we talk about a lot, (though it doesn’t exactly trip of the tongue, so we also talk about flexible communication a great deal here at Virtual Not Distant). It’s essential to understand how important this way of interacting is for sustainable remote work, to move beyond the exhausting grind of perpetual video meetings that teams who are new to remote can find themselves immersed in.
For more on this subject check out episode 234, and also this podcast from My Pocket Psych - because being able to communicate flexibly across time and space without snagging people up in endless calls is critical to successful online collaboration, as we discuss today with two fantastic guests.
5.02 Gonçalo Silva, CTO at Doist
Gonçalo joins us from Portugal, where he works as the CTO of Doist (creators of apps like Todoist and Twist), a fully remote, global, and bootstrapped organisation of 13 years, where they walk their talk and make tools which work for their own communication needs in the first instance. They have grown slowly and carefully, expanding over 34 countries, to a team of now comprising nearly 80 people.
Gonçalo Silva
At the start being a coalition of freelancers, the Doist team found that asynchronous communication was simply what they did naturally - working independently and checking in at meaningful touchpoints to move projects forward. But as they grew in number, so did the noise, and, as with more than one online team we have met, their Slack quickly became unbearable. Continually interrupting deep work with chitchat 24/7, expectations shifted to an immediate flow of conversation, driven by notifications and FOMO… and the deep focused work suffered as a result.
This led them to develop their own collaboration tool, Twist, to enable better organisation of the conversation into nested threads. They wanted to shift the expectation to more considered and asynchronous, long-form written communication which was separate from the surface flow of chat - reclaiming time for concentration and focus, and bringing the best aspects of email back into a chat context. It also helped them focus on internal transformation and reflection on values in an intense way during a period of growth and development, that would have been impossible in a higher noise-to-signal ratio environment.
As part of a deeper need to reclaim attention and focus in the current ‘always-on’ culture, Gonçalo also mentioned the Basecamp Hey product we have been discussing in our Whats Going On series. We all have devices that can connect us to every communication at every moment of our lives, so we really have to learn how to engage with them selectively and flexibility, in a way that we choose and control.
This has facilitated better decision-making for Gonçalo and his team, decisions with higher-quality inputs and better alignment with their values, and helped them create meaningful checkpoints and connection throughout the business cycle to maintain that sense of convergent thinking.
And their online chat… Remains calm and fluid. It’s there if they need it and it has flurries of activity - but people can dip in and out, and the real collaboration takes place asynchronously. The real-time stuff is more about relationship and trust building, than the work itself. The balance has been consciously evaluated and reviewed, and meetings do still happen. But they are a part of, not the entirety of, the conversation.
Of course we have to be careful that the media we use for asynchronous communication does not exclude people, and at Virtual Not Distant we have previously discussed concerns around people who do not express thoughts fluidly in writing. At Doist they contend that every remote worker needs to hone their ability to write clearly and fast, and develop that skill set - but they also use screencasting, like Loom videos, to share ideas and thoughts. They prefer written information though, so that the reader has complete control over the flow of information and the speed and sequencing with which they engage with the content, which also remains searchable and accessible.
Gonçalo role-models the organisation’s core values through his day-to-day interactions, and working toward incremental improvements - self-reflecting, and sharing and making sure his actions are congruent with his values and intentions to provide an example for the rest of the team.
Do check out the Doist Blog, and keep up with Gonçalo on Twitter.
Text is the most familiar form of asynchronous communication, and has been through many iterations in business communication (hands up who remembers faxes, or letters which came in the post?).
But it’s not the only medium available to us for this purpose, and the 21st Century Work Life podcast is an example of asynchronous audio. Audio can convey a great deal beyond the content of the words, you can include emotion and intention which goes beyond the written word.
Justin Mitchell
43.30 Justin Mitchell, Yac
Our next guest Justin is the founder of a tool called Yac, which he describes as voice messaging for teams - something which works because we’re so used to voice messaging in the consumer space.
Voice messaging is already very common in other cultures with different alphabets, and it enables very immediate and high-context communications to happen in a short time, whether for personal or business communications.
So Yac brought this into the B2b space, and TechCrunch described them as ‘bringing voicemail to the Slack generation’ - but this isn’t quite right, because it’s not voicemail. The audio message is the intended communication rather than a failed attempt to establish a call. It requires the originator to think through their message before creating it, to respect the other person’s time, and consider the tone and emotion they want to convey as well as the content of the words.
It’s an interesting response to the decline in phone conversation generally, and gives people the control to receive voice inputs in their own time rather than be interrupted synchronously (their app was initial desktop only, and many clients still prefer to keep their work conversation located and within boundaries there).
They want to liberate people from the tyranny of notifications and online presence, while maintaining the intimacy of voice as a way to connect and communicate. It can replace some messaging in Slack or similar platforms, and some live meetings, and it’s made their Slack more intentional and meaningful by filtering off some of the rich and in-the-moment messages. It promotes asynchronicity and flexible communication by reducing the slew of unread notifications, and storing up the interaction for when people are ready to engage with it. Yac lets them stay in communication, without continual noise.
The team also uses screenshare and annotation tools as well as voice, which enables really colourful context for asynchronous messaging, including potentially loaded communications like giving feedback, where it can be easy to misinterpret the tone or intent behind a written message.
Interestingly Justin incorporated customer feedback to create new group messaging functionality, having originally created the app for one-to-one or one-to-many use - showing that listening really works, and that they’re committed to building what people actually need. Their own development has also surfaced an interesting phenomenon: expressing ideas or challenges out loud can help the way we think about them and resolve them for ourselves.
Using Yac for meetings helps empower lurkers to speak up, and the app encourages people to engage with messages the way they want (including the ability to speed up playback, which enables longer messages to be left and responded to, even if this idea distresses Pilar!) All users get immediate feedback on their own behaviour and contribution level simply through the length of input they are sharing, and that can be insightful on its own.
You can learn more by connecting with Yac and Justin personally on Twitter, to keep the asynchronous conversation going. And of course they have a podcast, which they record live and share on Youtube: Remote Voices.
We hope you enjoyed this reflection on how the way we communicate impacts the way we work - we don’t have to be hyperconnected at all times in continuous conversation, we can find a balance which promotes depth and concentration while still remaining in close collaboration with our colleagues. Send us a some asynchronous feedback via our contact form if you’d like to share any thoughts, in your own time…
And don’t forget to check out all the different ways that Virtual Not Distant can help you, with every aspect of remote team leadership and practice, including our forthcoming ‘podcasting for connection’ service.
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