Communication as a process; not an event

Synchronous communication is all about high-stakes events. An async-first mindset lowers the stakes by thinking about communication as a process and not just an event. Let’s play both approaches out for say, a change in organisational structure that leaders want to announce to their people.

Communication as an event

Communication as a process

Leaders discuss the changes they want to make behind closed doors. They organise a series of events such as town hall meetings to announce the change and field questions. Optionally, a leader sends out an email about the change.

As leaders are contemplating the change, one of them writes up their thoughts as an internal blog post, to share with the rest of the company. People have a chance to interact with the post through comments. Leaders field the questions, take feedback onboard and engage with their people. The leadership team then synthesises these inputs into their final decision, behind closed doors. As a follow up, the leadership now writes a post that links to their thoughts in #1, summarising the change and how they see it play out. People share their comments and reactions as they did earlier. Leaders continue to engage on the thread too. As #5 plays out, leaders make themselves available for small groups so they can dive into details with people who want to have a fast-paced conversation about the change. Any questions that arise from #5 and #6 go into an FAQ about the change.

On the face of it, looking at communication as a process is a far more involved approach than just looking at it as an event. To me, that’s the beauty of it all. An event-centric approach creates the illusion that you’re done communicating. When in fact, you’re a victim of all the problems I’ve described earlier in this article. A process centric approach spaces out communication over time and allows you to build your message from one stage to the next.

While adopting an asynchronous way of working has its own benefits, asynchronous company communication brings a few added benefits.

1. Consistency. You write once, run infinitely. Everyone reads the same language. You can also reference what you write at a later point of time. 

2. A high signal to noise ratio. Since you’re writing, there’s less room to ramble. It’s not impossible, it’s just a lot more effort to ramble. Most of the time, you’re likely to make the point in the most succinct manner possible. If you have a comms team at your disposal, they probably have the writing skills to help you shorten and sharpen your message. The cool thing is that on most platforms, you can edit your message after the fact. That’s a feature verbal communication doesn’t have!

3. Fewer coordination challenges. In a distributed workplace, you no longer need to think about calendars, travel and how to get people to attend. People also read much faster than they can listen, so the cost of consuming your communication goes down considerably as well.

4. High engagement. By spacing out communication and thinking of it as a process, you drive up engagement. If you look at the example, I played out above, you build out multiple touch points with people. Individuals can build on each other's understanding. Modern platforms allow people to engage through lightweight means such as reactions and emojis. You can now meaningfully gauge people’s sentiments with respect to your communication.

5. Thoughtful conversations, when they happen. Well-crafted writing can make real-time communication unnecessary, but when real-time conversations do happen, everyone starts with some mutual understanding. Your conversations can now go a few levels deeper than if you’d just relied on a one-and-done event.

6. Deep organisational memory. The ability to go back and look at a leader’s prior posts and to reference them make for a terrific way to trace back an organisation’s journey. While leaders can avoid a lot of context-setting by simply referencing a prior post, people can hold leaders accountable the same way. Now this may seem disconcerting because no one likes others using their words against them. I urge leaders to not take themselves so seriously. If people are going back to your old communication and holding you accountable, that means they care. This is a good thing. It helps you grow, and it helps the organisation become stronger through shared accountability and ownership.