Read this after your next meeting

Throughout my career, I've seen lots of companies that consider meetings as work. I, on the contrary, think of them as a bug in communication.

They are a symptom of a much deeper issue: lack of clarity, lack of trust or someone simply likes to have an audience and feel important.

For information exchange and collaboration, async communication is the king.

Yes, it is harder to record yourself, or to write a memo. But if you take communication seriously, the purpose of any meeting is to produce a piece of documentation.

Why something needs to be done, what was discussed, what was decided and who is going to do it are all details you should put on paper anyways ¹. Then, why don't start there instead of a meeting?

If the reason we need a meeting is because no-body reads the emails, or updates the ideas doc, then fine, add a meeting as the last resort, but treat this as a process in changing the team's culture ².

Async collaboration is respectful of everyone's time & focus ³, it already builds a lasting decision log that serves as documentation, can be shared to new team members, and can be improved over time ⁴, much like code.

Ephemeral chats or emails are not a replacement for a meeting or documentation either. Specially when the conversation gets spread on multiple private messages or threads on different channels and normalizing interruptions.

Excessively using chat or having quick calls isn’t being efficient. It’s lazy and distracting. The process of writing encourages thoughtfulness. So write things down.

It is true that people can get more engaged when hearing someone or seeing someone's gestures when explaining an idea. But guess what? Giving presentations or screen recordings can also be done async. No need for everyone to be there to participate.

Progress tracking/updates should be on-topic for each task at hand, only to those interested. No need for daily meetings, with the whole team either.

Tools like bug trackers or forums can be a great start ⁵. Most support tags and categories for mapping ideas, subtasks to organize work, people can subscribe to or watch topics or comment and add attachments like presentations or videos for context.

I try to sell this idea as async-first communication, in contrast to async-only or no meetings at all.

As a disclaimer, I will grant that team building is a different type of need. It might require turning on the camera and talking to someone, it can help to gut check your team's emotional status.