Leviticus is the ultimate async document

Last week in the Torah reading cycle we completed the book of Leviticus. For years each week when reading the portion, I’d try to pull out lessons for life and leadership to share with my family on Shabbat. Now I get to share them here in a newsletter. When coming to the book of Leviticus I always struggled. The book has 10 portions/chapters that are all centered around the Tabernacle (Temple) and its service. The specs and how to build the Tabernacle and all of its utensils/etc. The garments of the Priests. And the specifics of the service conducted by the Priests. But this year I picked up on something new. Which always happens and why we read the same portions year after year. The ?? turned on when I looked at the book from the future of work vs leadership or traits perspective.

Last week we discussed how async was the future of?all?work; not just remote work. Even office-based companies are thinking about how to give their team more time to focus on getting stuff done. And the answer has always been async. Async has many forms but at heart, it’s anchored on long-form writing. Audio notes are great when you want to leave a bit of a longer message and don’t want to type it all out; especially on the go. Video clips are the best way to show something. But most of the legwork of async is done through writing. Before we dive into long-form writing here are a few great resources to check out after finishing this post. The first is a podcast episode I did a couple of years back with the CEO of Slite (a documentation tool designed around remote & async) where we specifically discussed writing as the ?? of async. Check it out below. Here’s a great?post?about documentation by Gitlab. This a great?post?about how to become a better writer by Doist. Finally a great new?manifesto?about the next iteration of work (async by default) by Almanac.

Let’s start off with the mother of all async documents, the book of Leviticus.?Here’s?a great 20,000ft overview of the book. Leviticus starts off by describing the various types of sacrifices?(Yes, there are more than one. Depending on whether a sin offering, guilt offering, or multiple other types).?It doesn’t just state here the types of offerings. In great detail, it describes the type of animal?(and age)?and additional offerings brought. When the specific offering is brought. And more specifics. Then it goes on to go into depth about the inauguration process of the Priests. Not just, inaugurate a priest but the exact ceremony of doing so. Then it moves into going into depth about how to distinguish Kosher from unkosher animals. Because the animals brought are specific.

Ok, I think you get the point. Our Sages teach us that the Torah doesn’t contain any extra or superfluous words or even letters. Every single letter and word is precise and has a meaning (well actually layers and layers of meaning like an onion). So if the Torah went into that much detail about exactly how to do the service, when to do it, where to do it, etc there must be a reason. And this is the central point of async and what the future of work will look like. Let’s now try to break down each point of the relevance of Leviticus and how it relates to the importance of writing and documentation today and in the future.

The central source of truth

The offerings that took place in the Tabernacle and later Solomon’s temple (and the second temple) lasted about 1000 years give or take. If you’ve ever played the game of ‘telephone’ as a child you understand that once the message or secret goes from the first to the second person it begins to change. Ending off it is something totally different from the original. If the offering service was so important it certainly couldn’t change over all those years or even to the next day. So the book of Leviticus which G-d gave to Moses and Moses wrote down serves the purpose of being the central source of truth. The original document, unchanged that details what the details were when given from G-d to Moses. Any Priest that needed to understand it more deeply or clarify any points simply needed to check the source. In addition, every future Priest over those 1000 years (and once again in the future) will need to know exactly what, how, why, where, and when to do.

We see this very clearly in our daily work lives in two places. The first is the ability for employees to find the information they need. Like, “Where do I find my paystub or the company holiday calendar.” People Ops teams receive these questions all the time. And it’s not just newbies. The reason they receive them is the policy documents are hard to find and unorganized. Maybe some company docs are in Google Docs, others in Confluence, and others in Notion.

The second is onboarding. A place where many (or most companies) fail. According to a 2021 Gallup?survey, only 12% of employees stated their company did a good job of onboarding them. And bad onboarding has a huge impact on the success of the new hire and thus the company. About 1/3 of resignations happen within the first?6 months.

31% of employees leave their jobs within the first six months in the US.

Then, 68% of employees that resigned did so within the first three months of their employment. Employee turnover stats indicate the importance of the first three months at an organization — the probationary period works both ways.

https://teamstage.io/employee-turnover-statistics

Now just imagine the time, effort, and money that went into finding the next superstar to help your business take off. All the time in the interview process by the team takes them away from getting work done, the money spent on this, and more. You have a 33% chance of losing them upfront. A good friend of mine ran into this very issue. They were hired for a job. They had 0 onboarding. Their manager told them repeatedly they didn’t have the time to sit with them to onboard them. There were little to no training/onboarding documents. So how did the company expect my friend to succeed? He didn’t and left within this 6-month window. Here’s my good friend Christie Hoffman (one of the People Ops leaders I personally follow) giving a great analogy for this.

Takeaways

• Document everything. Policies, procedures, how to do my job, etc. It’s an unlock for everyone else in the company present or future.
• Be detailed with organizing documents. For this reason, I’m personally not a fan of Google Drive for company docs. I much prefer Slite, Almanac, or Notion for this. But be precise. Use a format like the one below that is broken down by department.
• HR/People Ops
• Policies
• Time off
• Vacation
• Sick
• Parental Leave
• Make sure these documents are available to everyone at the team level and are centralized. Every employee should be able to find the parental leave policy with ease.

Future-proofing

As we mentioned above documenting everything helps future employees. When the third Tempe is rebuilt the offerings service will be reinstated. This service is been?‘out of service’?for 2000+ years. How the heck would any Priest know what to do?!?! The book of Leviticus clearly spelled out for all future Priests to learn exactly what needs to be done. The same goes for your future employees. Let’s say you hire someone new to the team and their first week is onboarding. At the end of the week, you tell them they’re expected the following Monday to share their weekly stand-up with the rest of the team. Without a document laying this out, your new hire would be clueless. At best, they ask their manager who needs to repeat the same process each and every time they hire someone new. Worst case they feel afraid to ask and completely fumble the first standup. Giving them anxiety and fear. Not good. But if you have a document, they know the standup is async. It’s a 90-second video walking through a document that includes what they achieved last week, what they’ll do next week, and the blockers they have. This video is shared on Monday at 10 am in a specific Slack channel. In addition to the video, they lay out these points as bullets as a thread to their video. All future employees should be able to truly hit the ground running ???

Review and collaborate

Unlike the Torah and the book of Leviticus which was given by G-d and thus is perfect for all time, your documentation isn’t. All documents will have a shelf life. Policies and procedures change and funding changes impact policies and benefits, and so much more. It’s crucial your documentation is continually iterated on to ensure accuracy and relevancy. Each team should periodically audit their documentation to validate if changes need to be made. The audit process should be collaborative. For example, for HR policies not only does the document perhaps need changing but the policy itself may need changing. For example, the initial parental leave policy gave 3 months of paid time off. Down the road, you get lots of ??? in funding or revenue. With this, you’re able to hire more great people. And of course, everyone is doing a great job documenting their jobs. So now a collaborative conversation should happen (minimally between the People team and management but optimally the rest of the team) about whether to change the policy to 6 months. Since now it’s more feasible and the growth of the company isn’t hinged on one single person. Finally ensure, there isn’t one owner?(or point of failure)?for documentation. For example, your Sales playbooks shouldn’t be owned just by the Head of Sales. Every person on the revenue team should have ownership to review and make changes.

Takeaways

• Audit documents every 6 months to find any changes that need to be done.?Remember, you want living documents vs monuments.
• Collaborate with the team. Ask colleagues/teams to share feedback on the current version of the policy/procedure/document and what changes can be made or at least suggested.
• Ensure there is no single point of failure for documents. Everyone should own them.

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