Go async-first with your team
Use the filters below to find async-first methods that are relevant to your team. For detailed articles, check out the blog.
Promote skin in the game
Don’t tell smart people what to do. Give them autonomy and allow them to take risks.
Manage by outcomes
When you measure performance, ignore presence and focus on what people are actually achieving.
Fund personal development
Help your people get better at what they love doing. Fund their personal development.
Practise radical candour
Use Kim Scott’s model of “Radical Candour” to share effective feedback.
Create slack in the system
Without the space to pause and reflect, you’ll rarely improve your systems. To get better, you need slack.
Practice “metawork”
Metawork is all the work you do, to make your actual work happen. Here’s why you, as a leader must practice it.
Coach your team to write
Your team won’t start writing things up diligently from day one. As a leader, you must coach them.
Coworking budgets
Coworking spaces allow your people to work in local chapters. Fund this flexibility, if you can.
Clarify your essential intent
Your team’s purpose must be concrete and inspirational. Here’s a way to define it.
Be there for your people
If you manage people, you must keep your calendar free so it’s easier for people to seek you out, if they must sync up with you.
Async by default
To include diverse people and points of view on your team, embrace asynchronous work as a default way to collaborate.
Find the "goldilocks" zone
Not too easy. Not too difficult. Just right. How do you find that zone for your direct reports?
Don't oversubscribe yourself
Most people can’t reliably manage more than 4-5 people. Work with your HR team to streamline reporting relationships so you only have as many people to manage as you can truly care for.
Escape recurring meeting hell
Recurring meetings are the bane of leaders’ and managers’ existences. Just. Get. Rid. Of. Them.
Document your role
Don’t let your team be vulnerable to a low “bus factor”. Make your role explicit.
Eliminate bullshit jobs
No one needs to do meaningless, soul-sapping work. Not even you. Take the time to get rid of such work so you and your colleagues can focus on the work that brings you joy.
1:1s with direct reports
The most effective tool to support and lead your direct report, is the 1:1 or one-on-one meeting. Here are some tips to do them well.
Tooling budgets
To follow an asynchronous, remote-first approach your people need the tools to be productive.