An asynchronous communication-first approach has several benefits over the traditional office or remote setup. Some key benefits include fewer meetings, better retention of employees who don't need to plan their lives around work, and optimizing for energy by allowing people to work at their own pace without constant distractions. There are nine pillars that define an asynchronous first approach, including having a vision and values driven company, defaulting to trust in employees, focusing on outcomes over hours worked, and not being asynchronous only but using meetings or real-time communication when needed.

1. Pillars of Async-First

2. Remote-
f
irst since 2010
40+ countries and ten timezones
~100 Employees

4. 95%+ of Doisters work from home

5. Asynchronous communication
is when you send a message
without expecting an
immediate response.
Simple concept

6. 🤯
Simple concept
Huge implications

7. O
ff
ice Hybrid Remote-
f
irst Async-
f
irst

8. Async-
f
irst is a better way
to work and live

10. Problems
With
Status Quo

11. Meetings morphed into video calls.
Shoulder taps multiplied into relentless
pings.
Long hours in the o
ff
ice became constant
presence on chat apps.
Remote work promised change

12. 253% more time in meetings!
Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index 2022

13. “When you're operating on the maker's
schedule, meetings are a disaster. A
single meeting can blow a whole
afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces
each too small to do anything hard in.”
— Paul Graham
Maker’s Schedule,
Manager’s Schedule

14. “Upon returning to a task after a
distraction, it can take up to 23 minutes
to re-focus. Even brief mental blocks as
a result of switching can take as much
as 40% of a person’s productive time.”
Context Switching is Expensive
Source: The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress
(University of California, Irvine)

15. “People who try to juggle messages
and work see an IQ decline of 10
points — equivalent to missing a
night of sleep and more than twice
the drop after smoking pot.”
Context Switching makes you
dumber
Source: Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University

16. The current way
of working ends
in one place:
burnout!
But there is a
better way!

17. The New Communication Pyramid

18. Bene
f
its of Async-First

19. Fewer meetings

20. Handbook-
f
irst

21. Default communication
becomes deep

22. Timezones aren’t a
problem. Hire the best.

23. Optimize for energy

24. People are happier as they
don't need to plan their life
around their work.
Async-
f
irst companies see 90%+
employee retention.

25. Basic principles
• Async by default
• Meetings and real-time
when needed
• Retreats, F2F meetings,
etc. a few times per year

26. Advanced
Async-First pillars.

27. Pilar 1:
Vision, Mission, and
Values driven

28. Pilar 2:
Default to trust

29. Pilar 3:
Autonomy and clear
responsibility
• Directly Responsible Doister
• Decentralized decision-making
• No Committees

30. Pilar 4:
Transparency by default

31. “We’re always shocked that the returns to
writing well are really high. And it feels like the
world hasn’t fully internalized that. Certainly,
when you have a 3000 person global company
as Stripe is, you’re going to need to do lots of
asynchronous communication.”
— John Collison (Stripe co-founder)
Pilar 5: Everyone is a Writer

32. “Writing is a tool for thinking.”
— Adam Grant

33. “There is no way to write a six-
page narratively structured
memo and not have clear
thinking.”
— Je
ff
Bezos

34. Pilar 6:
Everyone is a Reader

35. Pilar 7:
Outcomes over hours
worked

36. Pilar 8:
Hands-on management
Leaders are functional
experts who also do
hands-on work.

37. Pilar 9:
Not Async-Only

38. Thank you!
Twitter:
@amix3k