How Asynchronous Work Helps You Leverage Your Team’s Diversity

Async communication is about allowing team members to “consume and respond to messages on their own time instead of on the sender’s schedule.”

By setting norms around communication and boundaries around work, async can be used to create a calmer, more productive, more quality-focused, and more human-centered way of working.

When a company actually wants the opinions of those who work there, there are far more effective ways to have a productive conversation around the insights and desires that we each bring to the organization. Asynchronous and structured, these interactions are vital sources of connection and wisdom.

At a deep level, meeting inflation is about the outdated expectation that all office work ought to be synchronous, or happening at the same time for everyone. Meetings require synchronicity: Everybody be present now. But most white-collar labor can be at least somewhat asynchronous. We send emails and chats that don’t require an immediate response.... See more

At the end of meetings, check in with people who’ve been quiet to see if they have anything to add.Before finalizing your strategy, roadmap, or spec, give your team a chance to give feedback asynchronously.Organize brainstorms and ofter types of ideation sessions where team members can contribute their ideas.