Review of Async First - book & approach

Episode 1 - On the Book

The book by Sumeet is a fantastic read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book - it is one of the 'complete' books which starts with building convictions, principles, then practices and brings open the objections and addresses them. Sumeet gives a very practical way to start Async and how to move from All Sync to 'Async by default'. It is one of the Path breaking books that I have read in the recent past.

One of the important aspects about this book is that it does not demonise sync ways of working and neither is it dogmatic about Async ways of working. Sumeet presents a place for both and shows a decision matrix of when you choose sync or async based on the framework.

Sumeet takes problems head on like the demand of doing 'Agile' - agile manifesto encourages for face-face meeting for most of its rituals. He takes up the principles, rituals, practices - unpacks the complexity and provides the solution of how these rituals and practices can be shifted to Async ways without destroying the spirit of Agile. He warns of dogmatic ways of Async and warns the anti-patterns of Async too !

Highly recommended.

Episode 2- Async is no ordinary beast

For starters, this is the definition of Async from the book.

Asynchronous work is the practice of working on a team that doesn’t require multiple people to be online simultaneously. You do as much as you can with what you have, write things up clearly, transfer ownership of the work to whomever needs to pick it up next, and then work on something else.

Async comes with benefits of better work-life balance, time for deep work, inclusive workplace, communication practices for scale and prioritise action over perfection.

My view of Async

Async is unlike any other change in the organisation. Communication is the DNA of how people exchange information, develop trust. I would put this in meta-change that organisations need.

There are few building blocks/ mental models that has to be in place to make async ways of working. This has to start from an individual and then to team and then spreading to an organisation.

1. Appreciation for Deep Work and having provisions for the same.
2. Writing as a skill for articulating thoughts, documentation
3. Habit of accessing knowledge through systems predominantly
4. Ability to go to sleep peacefully even if there are lags to communication.
5. Being comfortable to switch between sync and Async mode based on the context.
6. Ability to break down a big thing (e.g. Culture, Trust) into smaller parts( eg. rituals, connections, ways of working) and feeling satisfied that handling smaller parts will take care of the big thing.
7. Individual and Organisation awareness and willingness to discuss & find solutions.
8. A culture of efficiency and excellence and discuss the same frequently.
9. Culture of discussing outcomes, outputs than optics.

What makes change to Async is the pace of change in business, supply, economic situation, technology and the expectation that the response to these has to come at a faster rate. When all of these factors interact with each other, it increases the complexity of the overall system which makes the shift in communication difficult as organisations are always on the run to respond to other changes.

Episode 3- Yet, the beast can be tamed .. to an extent

The above-mentioned complexity is why Async is very important, and it becomes a question of the path Async takes in an organisation. In my own professional life, there are three reasons why I have to move to Async to scale myself better.

1. Knowledge will continue to explode, and it is impossible for that to be locked with people. It has to move to systems and people taking the role of 'Providing inspiration' than 'knowledge'.
2. Response to fast pace to business will need more efficiencies. The biggest culprit is the agenda-less, structure-less, unnecessary meetings. If we shift 40% of the time spent in meetings to async preparation, we will save 200% time in the future.
3. (Top) Talent will get scarce, and its definition will keep changing- unless we have provisions to welcome them, it is difficult to scale the organisation. There is no other way than learning this balance of Async and Sync ways of working.

Async promises a better work life culture and hope we move towards that gradually while retaining the freedom to go to office whenever you need :)

Episode 4- Conclusion

For starters, buy the book!

There are many practices given in the book. Spending some time about these practices will help you get to create an open mind to try them out. I made many notes in the kindle version of the book which helped me to think with the book.