"Welcome to Not-Together Time."

(This was also posted in our blog here)

Introduction

Realtime (Sync) meetings on Zoom/Slack are good for SOME things, like socializing and team bonding. There are also sensitive situations that need a face-to-face interaction (emergencies, alignment, separations). But Remote is a global company with people in many time zones. This makes sync meetings/huddles inefficient for routine work. The person you need could be asleep or enjoying down time. If we waited for syncs to decide or act, we would be too slow to be competitive. The answer is to avoid sync methods for most work and use asynchronous work methods instead.

What is asynchronous work?

Asynchronous work is the stuff you do at your own pace and order, not during a meeting or huddle. This amount of freedom can be daunting. We need everyone even, swift, and nimble; in other words, able to get the right things done without waiting for others. Async methods help you focus on, document, and communicate this work to the team. We've broken our best practices into three parts - Multiplexing, Communication, and Action

Buzzbee Barkley, 1935, definitely not async.

• Multiplexing - Be ready to select and work on more than one project at a time.
• Communication - Use the right tool at the right time. Include the right people at the right time.`
• Action - "Always Default to Action!"

Summary

Async work is a way to organize how to get stuff done with less interruption and higher efficiency based on a few ideas:

• Async work should be used more often than sync work, it provides better resource management, reduces waste and therefore optimizes productivity.
• Multiplexing your tasks and reducing scope allows you to deliver faster, test your hypotheses sooner and achieve success with higher confidence
• Communication should be async most of the time and only here and there be sync with things that definitely require you to do so. Keeping this as a rule of thumb allows people to focus on their tasks longer and concentrate on best practices like documentation and writing proper procedures.
• Always defaulting to action (within reason) helps the whole team move faster, reduce wasteful times and increase ownership.

This is inspired in the Toyota Production System 3Ms methodology; more information about that here.