What does async communication mean?

Definition

Asynchronous communication means non-real-time communication. Exchanging information without expecting an immediate action or response. It’s important to highlight the expectation here, as that’s what enables async communication.

Whenever a workmate requests something and you reply immediately, you are addressing it synchronously. You are fulfilling their expectations in terms of timing and urgency — that would normally lead you into a real-time chat.

If you ask your workmate to send you an email with the details of the request, you are effectively generating an expectation about when your reply will come. You are trying to shift that conversation to async.

The fact that we associate email with async is related to how the communication channel is used. There is one thing that has to be provided by the channel to enable async communication: information persistence. That’s why you leave a voice message (async) when the phone call (sync) is missed.

Pros and cons

Human communication is extremely complex. There’s no silver bullet or best way to communicate. As expected, it totally depends on the context. So the discussion should not be about how to do it right, but to understand when to communicate in what way.

Some benefits of async communication are:

No scheduling needed

Synchronous communication happens in a specific time slot, where all messages are exchanged in a timely manner. This time slot can be allocated beforehand — or not.

Asynchronous communication happens at any moment. Messages are shared whenever the senders decide to do so. No specific slots are allocated.

Self documented

As we explained previously, async communication requires information to be stored, as it will be consumed later in time. After a non-real time conversation, you will have a record of the information generated with no extra effort. The channel will provide the way to consume that information: text messages, audios, video clips….

Second thought

Real time conversations often require thinking and providing an answer as soon as possible. It’s easy to provide information that is not complete or correct. With async communication we remove the expectations of an immediate response. We gain extra time to prepare the response, potentially making it better in terms of the information provided.

Democracy

Synchronous communication is timeboxed. Time suddenly becomes a precious resource. Without an external role regulating how the time is distributed among all parts, it’s easy to end up failing. Not everyone has the same information to give, not all information is necessarily equally valuable for everyone, and not everyone has the ability to communicate in groups. With asynchronous communication, everyone has a chance to contribute without those constraints.

But not every situation is suited for this kind of communication. There are some areas where non-real time fails:

High bandwidth

Spacing messages in time usually means that less messages are exchanged during the conversation. During async conversations there’s less room to iterate concepts or ideas. This makes it a bad choice for ideation, brainstorming or any other meeting that requires a high information bandwidth.

Personal touch

Some things are better communicated in person. The more personal the communication gets, the easier to build trust between all participants. Since async communication removes the presence and spaces up messages, communication becomes less personal. Some messages require a full personal touch that async won’t provide.

Wrapping up

We have tried to summarise the differences between sync and async communication. We hope this generates some awareness about how and when we can communicate. In the next chapter we will explain how this translates to your work — what kind of meetings we normally have at work, and how to use async channels to improve the way we communicate with our colleagues.

Cassette. Structured async meetings for teams

Unlock your schedule with Cassette

Cassette is a free multiplatform app created to disrupt the broken meeting culture using voice notes. We believe that asynchronous work should unlock your schedule and bring back your own time. Cassette provides you an easy way to produce voice messages and consume them efficiently. It enhances meetings by adding structure such as agenda, due date and reactions.