What stands in the way of us replacing meetings with async work (emails, docs, Slack channels)?
We started an era of remote work and things might never go back to the old days. A colleague recently asked me “What do you think stands in the way of us replacing meetings with emails, docs, async work, smaller channels, etc?”
Here are my takes:
One, there is speed and the illusion of speed. We believe that face-to-face is more effective in getting our message across and achieve what you want. While it might be true in some cases (a group of engineers has an informal meeting to whiteboard/chat about ideas), a face-to-face meeting is not always faster. In fact, such a meeting creates a sense of ‘accomplishing something’ even though there is limited progress. We say to ourselves ‘maybe we need 5 meetings on this topic and we have completed 1 out of 5.’ In contrast, async work can drag on and on and it’s hard to pinpoint an end to an async work. We need to use async work to build up to an effective meeting or to use a brief meeting to structure more effective async work.
Two, there is forced attention. Everyone wants others’ 100% attention to get things done and we believe that meeting is the only way to get 100% attention from the counterpart. Async work or emails mean that you might get a reply the next day … or never (I’m guilty of this as well). Your Slack/emails/docs are only one of the hundreds of correspondences the other person receives every day. How to force the attention of the other person on your matter? Set up a meeting.
Three, we want a true reaction. We want to see other reactions on the spot as it gives so much info about their thought process, willingness, etc. If you know their thought process, you can have so many insights to plan your next steps. Although async work should be able to showcase one’s thought process as well, not everyone has the patience to write down their thought succinctly — they only show you the end result of their thought process in the doc or Slack. So, you may get a decision, a question, or a comment without knowing where the person is coming from. It’s frustrating and exhausted for us to second-guess the other person. So, let’s call a meeting to see how that person responds to you on the spot. During a meeting, we usually think out loud. Sharing one’s thought process is important for teamwork.
Other people might think about corporation culture, person-to-person connections, and other reasons why meetings stay. I’m in the camp of having fewer and smaller meetings to spend more time on deep thinking. However, I recognize that some meetings are important. There is nothing more energetic and inspiring for me than being in a well-prepared meeting with a small group of talented teammates to debate a subject and create something together.
