The offsite that fixed six months of tension
A support lead in Nairobi describes the team offsite in Lisbon that resolved tensions no video call could, and what they planned, deliberately, to make it work.
Async is not a personality
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Show notes
Async is not a personality
Everyone claims to be async now, and most teams still wait on each other all day. Lucía and a product manager in Berlin work out what asynchronous communication really requires, and which conversations should never be a document.
- The three kinds of message, and only one of them needs an answer
- Writing a decision document that people actually read
- When a ten minute call saves two days of comments
- Default calendars, quiet hours and the Manila night shift problem
- A weekly ritual that replaced four recurring meetings
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Transcript
Hola, welcome to Three Time Zones Before Lunch. I am Lucía Ferreyra, and I am recording from Buenos Aires, where it is early, with a dog who may or may not contribute later. Today's episode is called async is not a personality, because I am tired of job adverts that say we are an async company when what they mean is nobody answers Slack. Joining me from Berlin is a product manager whose team spans Argentina, Germany and the Philippines, and together we are going to be honest about what asynchronous work actually requires. We will cover the three kinds of message, how to write a decision document people read to the end, when a short call is kinder than a long thread, and a weekly ritual that let her team delete four recurring meetings. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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