After almost 2 years of working from home, I think we can all agree that the way we work must change. We're sick of zoom. Sick of long, drawn-out meetings that have little value. Sick of wasting time.
As we have moved to a hybrid way of working people have taken what they have done in person – which, by the way, wasn’t really working either - and tried to replicate it in a virtual environment. But if we want to embrace the opportunities that flexible work offers it means rethinking how we work together.
This problem isn’t new. Even prior to #wfh people had too many meetings. The solution that many argued for was fewer meetings…but often that leads to fewer decisions being made and things not progressing.
That’s because the problem isn’t meetings - it’s what we fill them with!
If you want to claw back some of your time you need to start thinking critically about the components of your meetings/workshops etc. Do they need to be done together? Not necessarily. Instead of stopping meetings, we need to start making them shorter by complementing them with asynchronous work.
Introducing more asynchronous work means:
🖥️ Reducing zoom fatigue
🕔 Less wasted time going around in circles in a meeting
📅 Not struggling to find when everyone is "available" for long meetings/workshops
💭 People aren't put on the spot and have time to put thought into their input
But best of all…
📥 People can manage their time more effectively, working on things when it suits them
Which is what we want right?
In my opinion, meetings and synchronous work are for discussion and decision-making. While async is for (almost) everything else e.g. context setting, reviewing content, pre-reading for meetings, and brainstorming. This may not be the case for every single meeting but for most this stuff can come out.
Let me give you an example of how it works in the real world:
Let's say you're planning a workshop. Your agenda is:
20 minutes overview / what you are trying to achieve
15 minutes of brainstorming
30 minutes of discussion
All up that is 65 minutes in the session
Truly working async looks more like this:
Pre-workshop
a 5 minute overview video that attendees watch before the session
attendees list any questions they have and complete the brainstorm activity online
Your attendees have spent about 10 minutes prior on pre-work.
Your workshop agenda now looks like this:
5 minutes to answer their questions added before the session
5 minutes to review the brainstorming ideas previously generated
30 minutes of discussion
The session is now 40 minutess. All up, including the prework, it takes 50 minutes - saving 15 minutes on the original agenda. That might not sound like a lot but if you're doing this for all of your meetings and collaboration activities it will add up.
Any time saving though is just a bonus. There are many benefits of working more asynchronously (see my list above). Even if we just take this simple example:
You don’t waste time for attendees that already have context and know what the session is about. You’re no longer expecting them to sit through a 20 minute overview and, in the new scenario, they can even skip the video
You can prepare for meetings better. The pre-work questions indicate what people don’t know/understand. You now know upfront what they are struggling with, and can adjust the agenda so there’s the right amount of time to answer them
Better brainstorming as people aren't put on the spot and have time to think about their input
This is just one example, but there are many small changes we can make to our day-to-day interactions that will radically change the way we work for the better. Rethinking the way that we're working together isn’t easy. It will take thought, effort and commitment - but it’s worth it.
Have you been working more asynchronously lately? What worked well? What didn't go well?
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