Async and Meetings
14 articles on async and meetings.
Where Written Communication Breaks: The Question That Sits Until Its Owner Is Back
The failure is not the writing. It is the question that sits until its owner is back. Two rules: what must be written, and what may wait for a person.
The Async Standup, and Why Written Updates Drift Into Theatre
The three classic prompts ask what you did, which nobody needs. Keep two lines: what changed, and what is waiting on whom.
Status, Decision or Discussion: A Rule for Every Recurring Meeting
Only discussion needs everyone live. Split the mixed meetings, run the written replacement for two weeks alongside, then cancel.
Running Retros Async Across Time Zones
Split the retro: gathering is async and better that way, deciding is live and short. Two days to contribute, thirty minutes to decide, three actions.
Project Updates Stakeholders Read, and Stop DMing You About
Stakeholders message you because the update answered your questions, not theirs. Five lines: status, change, risk, decision needed, next.
Building a Write-It-Down Culture, and Why People Stop
People stop writing because the cost is theirs and the benefit is someone else, later. Make writing save the writer a question and it needs no enforcement.
No-Meeting Days Work Until Someone Needs an Answer
A no-meeting day removes the calendar entries and leaves the need, so it arrives as messages instead.
Sync or Async: a Two-Question Test
Question one: does the outcome depend on real-time exchange? Question two: does the answer already exist in someone's work?
Making Decisions Async Without Them Getting Reopened
Async decisions get reopened because they were never closed. Four lines close one: what was decided, by whom, what was rejected, and who can change it.
Replace the Status Meeting, Keep the Status
A status meeting solves an availability problem badly: it batches a continuous need into a weekly event.
Cutting Meetings on a Distributed Team: Start With the Ones That Exist to Answer Questions
Do not cut meetings by percentage. Sort them by purpose: decide, argue, connect, or inform. The informing meetings are where the hours hide.
Replacing the Daily Standup Without Losing the Information
A standup produces state, blockers, and incidental conversation. Only the third needs a call. Here is what to write instead.
Becoming Async-First in a Team That Runs on Slack
Slack is not the obstacle. The expectation of instant replies is. Three changes make async stick, and the third one decides the outcome.
Async Communication: The Practices That Survive Contact With a Deadline
Async practices collapse under deadline pressure, and that is information. Three survive, three do not.
Your team’s week, answered from the work.
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