The principles for asynchronous collaboration
By now, we’ve made a significant journey together. Starting from the very first article of this series, we’ve made a case for a better way to work. We’ve discussed why you may find it tough to introduce asynchronous work to your organisation and to your team. We then moved to a more positive frame and discussed how you can help your team build a mindset for change. More recently, we discussed the biggest and the next biggest superpowers for asynchronous work.
Now it’s time to lay out the framework for change. It all starts with values and guidelines. In addition, the team needs to reflect on the work they’re doing. Motivation is no trivial matter. So in this post, we’ll also discuss a few important parameters that your team can use to judge how motivated they are with the work they’re doing and the way they organise. Consider this as a set of sensible defaults to begin your journey of change. Before I go any further, I must acknowledge the inspiration I’ve had from some of the OGs of remote work - Automattic, Basecamp, Gitlab, Doist. Much of this post draws inspiration from what they’ve published in the past. Consider this my distillation of their pearls of wisdom. Enough said, let’s begin with values.
Values
Values that underpin asynchronous collaboration
Values represent our beliefs about what we consider as important in a certain context. In asynchronous communication, we’re aiming for a set of benefits. Now you could aim for a smaller or larger set of benefits, and you may even experience some unexpected benefits. Your practices may also change as your team works together. Your collaboration values, however, won’t change as frequently. I strongly recommend defining your collaboration values, so you have a north star to align with. Here are the values that characterise asynchronous interactions and collaboration for me.
Empathetic
We aim to build inclusive teams where people demonstrate care for each other. Our communication should reflect that care and inclusion.
Deep
We don’t shy away from detail. We realise that off the cuff thinking can trigger biases, so we take the time to structure our thoughts and express ourselves in a medium that favours depth.
Scalable
Our communication choices should scale beyond individuals, their personal styles and the current size of the team. We communicate not just for the people who are engaging in the current interaction, but also for people who will join the team in the future.
Thoughtful
We take the time to consider the time, medium, spatial context, and the recipients of our communication. We recognise that these factors are just as important as the content of our communication.
Reflective
Communication artefacts and patterns should evolve with time. We make time to improve our communication and seek feedback for it. Reflecting on our work and communicating about it, is also an important part of our jobs.
Guidelines
I expect you to adapt this list to your purpose. This is a set of guidelines that we use on my current team. When I work with another group of people, I'll even change this list; of course, with my teammates’ inputs. A good way to introduce these guidelines is to add them to a collaborative document and then open it up for people to add comments, suggestions and edits. If things get into a back-and-forth debate, set up a meeting (yes, a meeting) to resolve contentious issues. This lays the foundation for how all of you work together, so consensus is important. I’m going to divide the guidelines into categories so they’re easy for you to consume and reuse.
Oh, and one more thing - you’ll see that I’ve phrased these guidelines in the first and second person. I mean for them to speak to the reader - i.e. the team member. You can choose a different phrase.
Working hours
You have the freedom to choose your productive hours. Clients and stakeholders are the only exception, in exceptional circumstances 😀.
Take time off whenever you need to, but please give the team a heads up for annual or casual leave. If you’re unwell, please prioritise your health and take sick leave as necessary.
Prioritisation and urgency
Urgent is overrated. ASAP is toxic. Keeping someone blocked, though, is insensitive.
The only urgent medium is the phone. Everything else, we address based on protocols.
Transparency and teamwork
Our goals, progress, and outcomes should be transparent. Everything we do for the team should be visible to the team on our backlog. If it’s not on the backlog, then we take it that the work doesn’t exist.
All information in the team is open by default, but also targeted by default. We elevate visibility while also lowering noise.
We’re not a collection of individuals. Our work and goals will be interdependent, and we should actively create opportunities to collaborate with each other.
Process over outcomes
Thoughtful decisions can still lead to bad outcomes. We don’t let outcome bias impact our decision hygiene.
Mistakes will happen sometimes. As long as we learn from the mistake and strengthen our process to incorporate that learning, we’ll be richer for the experience.
Making trade-offs
Act in haste and regret at leisure. Slowing down can help us make better decisions.
There’s a fine line between the wisdom of the crowds and too many cooks. We want to get diverse opinions, but we should also avoid design by committee.
Let perfect not be the enemy of good. At times, we’ll have to do the best we can and default to action.
Facilitating deep work
Communicate, but don’t interrupt. Let’s communicate in ways that are respectful of each other’s need to experience flow.
Meetings are not the first option. There’s a lot that needs to happen outside meetings to make the meeting productive.
Write it up
Good writing is clear thinking made visible. If it’s important for over two people, write it up. As simple as that. Communicate in as much detail as you can.
Communicate with kindness when writing. Read what you write. Place yourself in your reader’s shoes and make your writing easier to consume. You’ll improve your own communication and analytical skills this way.
Choose the right medium and recipients
Who we direct communication to matters as well. Choose your audience consciously, otherwise you risk getting inaction and creating spam. Use the agile, pigs vs chickens philosophy to guide these decisions.
Before you use a noisy medium, such as chat or even email, ask if you can use a slower, more deliberative medium instead. Every notification adds up, and as a corollary, every notification you avoid, is a vote for deep work.
Being reflective
Feedback is only for two reasons: to strengthen confidence or to improve effectiveness. Anything else is not feedback. One way we’ll help each other grow is through regular, constructive feedback.
Daily and weekly reflections not only help us self-assess our contributions but also create transparency in our teams. Weekly goal setting gives us a way to align our personal ambitions to the team’s objectives. This is part of our jobs.
Self-organising
You’re a manager of one. Don’t expect someone to tell you what to do. You know what the team’s trying to achieve and everyone trusts you to self sign-up.
Take ownership of the project. If you notice a problem and no one’s mentioned it, take the initiative to solve the problem. If it’s beyond your skills, ask for help. Once you fix the problem, “write up” what you did, so everyone can learn.
We’re all leaders as the only people in our respective roles. Leaders are not bosses - just someone trying to align the team in a certain area of expertise and serve its needs. Anyone can take that mantle, but it sits heavy on your head.
Being human
To build a great team, we need to connect with each other as human beings. Meet each other for casual chats, coffees, and to just share your experiences. If you hit on something important, be sure to “write it up”.
Written communication is devoid of body language and is easy to misinterpret. While we work on our team camaraderie and trust, interpret “best intention”. We’ll all be less stressed that way.
Build a motivating team environment
It’s all great to talk about deep work and flow, but that talk rings hollow if your team doesn’t feel motivated. A prerequisite for an asynchronous work to succeed is that everyone on the team feels motivated to be part of it. In 2009, Dan Pink wrote one of the most popular books on the theory of motivation - Drive. Please watch the TED Talk if you haven’t already. In the book, Pink outlines three key dimensions of motivation.
Autonomy. Our desire to be self-directed. It increases engagement over compliance.
Mastery. The urge to get better skilled.
Purpose. The desire to do something that has meaning and is important.
I suggest writing up an accountability charter on your team so every team member can self assess the team’s work and their contributions on Pink’s three dimensions. Here’s a starting point that you can change to your context. At any point in time, if many of these statements ring true, then you can tell that you have a motivating team environment.
| Dimension | What we should expect |
|---|---|
| Autonomy | We can work flexibly in a manner that we feel productive; as long as we do the work our stakeholders expect us to do. We have a prioritised backlog from which we complete work in sequence. Priorities can change and we have a say in that. The team contributes to this backlog through a nuanced understanding of business, customer and client requirements. Urgent is overrated; ASAP is toxic. If something isn’t truly urgent, we don’t drop work in progress and switch context. We keep calm and add it to the backlog. |
| Mastery | Whatever we do, we should see clear opportunities to improve our skills and learning. Not all work will be glamorous, but a non-trivial percentage of our work should be in the “Goldilocks zone”; i.e. work that’s just on the edge of our existing skills. As a team, we prioritise demonstrable, hard skills over hand waving. We know we’re able to execute our skills when we get stuff done. So we limit work in progress - stop starting and start finishing. This means that we divide work into tasks that have independent value and put all our energy into keeping things moving. Anything that’s in-progress for more than a week, is too big. |
| Purpose | We’re aligned on personal, team and organisational objectives. Our personal objectives take into account our short term and long term career aspirations and are part of our performance objectives. To be agile is to also be passionate about our client and our customer’s goals. As long as we think things through, we’re happy to pivot based on the feedback we get from our stakeholders. |
Now that you’re getting started with your change journey, consider how you want to introduce a variation of the above values and guidelines to your team. Work with your team to develop the accountability charter to your context as well. Once you’re done, signpost these clearly on your team’s wiki or document repository. These will be the first components of your team handbook. What’s that you ask? More on that soon!