First things first: communication is hard. Every company struggles to find the right way to how ca and it's a constant source of frustration.
From first principles, internal comms is hard because it’s a polynomial problem: the number of communication paths between people grows at a faster rate than the number of people you add to the company.
In this document we'll consider some of the principles to consider when communicating information between people in an organization, which will hopefully lead to a better understanding of which tools to use and how to use them.
Credit: Many of the principles in this document have been influenced/adopted from best in class companies such as: GitLab, Levels Health, Netflix, AirBnB, and Remote + along with personal experiences.
What is asynchronous (async)?
"Asynchronous work is a simple concept: Do as much as you can with what you have, document everything, transfer ownership of the project to the next person, then start working on something else.” - Preston Wickersham
So what is synchronous (sync)?
Synchronous work requires 1 or more team members actively working on the same objective at the same time together. Anything that has a synchronous expectation is imposing upon someone else's attention and it necessarily prioritizes what you want them to do over what they would otherwise be doing.
Asynchronous: "I will process this information when it's convenient for me"
Synchronous: "You will process this information when it's convenient for me"
What does async by default mean?
We’re all-remote. Yet, all-remote doesn't necessitate an asynchronous by default environment. We could have no office, no specific time zone focus, and operate synchronously - but this would be an operational disaster.
As such, our communication is default asynchronous, and we try to have as few meetings as possible. Synchronous communication can be distracting when not used correctly; this doesn't mean that we shouldn't meet when meetings are required or utilize sync communication, but we should be cognizant of not distracting others with synchronous messages when urgent responses aren't required.
Triage in the context of effective communication means the ability to determine the relative priority of a given piece of information.
Emergency situations in hospitals are the best known application of triage. People who show up to the emergency room will have different injuries. Some of these injuries are immediately life threatening (e.g. gunshot, car accident) while others are less serious but still require medical attention.
If hospitals treated people based solely on the relative order in which they showed up at the hospital, many people would die waiting for treatment behind someone with a less serious injury. The example below shows how without triage, half the patients would die while awaiting medical attention, while if you triage people based on the seriousness of their injuries, nobody would die.
Figma link, in case of editing: https://www.figma.com/file/2r4jtZ6rYlbQlK0IQWDNhP/triage?node-id=1%3A143
In much the same way that a hospital needs to determine who needs treatment first in order to maximize survival rates, a good communication tool will allow someone to determine the relative priority of a given piece of information.
Async communication allows for triage to occur. However, not all async communication tools are equal in their ability to triage (e.g. email vs. teams vs. text message). More on this below.