In the last 3 decades, increased inter-disciplinary collaboration, setting up of complex global supply chains, agile way of working in software industry and beyond changed the way people worked in most industries. The fundamental shift was an emphasis on more collaboration leading to an increase in meetings and more usage of communication channels. And then coronavirus happened when majority of the world was forced to lock down and work from home.

Every crisis, a world crisis (or even personal) produces a ‘new normal’ where things evolve to a future state rather than going back to what they were. We still don’t know what the ‘new normal’ after this virus crisis would look like, though a massive increase in remote working seems to be an inevitable part of this ‘new normal’. Every crisis, no matter how different always produces a set of winners and losers (both organisations and individuals), and successful ones are those that adapt to ‘new normal’ by developing new systems, processes rather than following the old ones. There is no reason to suggest that the current covid crisis will be any different.

Understanding and explaining any concept on a call is cognitively much more demanding than doing it in-person. 

A major tenet of working in the pre-covid era was an emphasis on synchronous collaboration. As the name implies, it would be where all the team members are working on an idea or a problem together at the same time. This would mean the usual status meetings, presentations, brainstorming sessions or even working on a business case. Such synchronous collaboration works well when most team members are in office, however in a remote working model, this would mean 8-10 hours of video (or audio) calls a day. How many of us enjoy being on calls 8 hours a day? Working in an office with colleagues for 8 hours is not the same as being on a call for 8 hours. Understanding and explaining any concept on a call is cognitively much more demanding than doing it in-person. 

So, will this lead to a period of reduced collaboration? Quite the opposite. With problems getting more complex and spanning across disciplines, we need even more collaboration than before. However, more online communication doesn’t necessarily mean more online collaboration to create something new. A large part of that collaboration needs to be asynchronous with all team members not trying to do the same thing at the same time.

More communication is not a synonym for more collaboration.

Let me explain how asynchronous collaboration can work, and be a more productive way of working than being on endless calls throughout the day.

1. Imagine your team working on a shared whiteboard where you write a business opportunity, status, new ideas, sales pipeline , etc., and other collaborators can comment, edit, add their points either simultaneously or at a later time, and the team members would keep getting notifications on their Slack or Teams channel. This can largely reduce the need for status meetings which happen in different industries by different names but the purpose is largely to know what the team is working upon. There are multiple tools to support such a way of working with Dropbox Paper and Notion being my personal favourites. Google Docs ( and Office 365 later on) have supported such collaborative editing for a long time now but it’s full potential is yet to be realised in most large organisations.

2. A key facet of asynchronous collaboration is preparing self explanatory presentations or documents which the audience can understand in their own time. This concept is not new and in fact, Jeff Bezos famously uses this in Amazon where people are encouraged to write 6 page memos for new ideas. Preparing self explanatory documents (or slides) enables the author to think clearly and helps the audience to grasp material at their own pace. This reduces the need for calls where the goal is simply to convey information. Thinking and grasping information on a call is not as easy as in-person because a portion of our brain is occupied with fixing the audio/video mechanisms during the call.

3. This leaves us with meetings where the goal is to take decisions. Such meetings should require synchronous collaboration, however participants should already be prepared with relevant information before hand to enable a precise and meaningful discussion.

The concept of asynchronous collaboration is not new, in fact it is much older than synchronous collaboration when people would exchange notes through postal mails and telegrams. Then it was slow and technological tools evolved to enable faster synchronous communication through calls, IMs. No organisation collaborates completely on a synchronous or asynchronous basis. In fact, the most widely used (and most hated) communication medium, email is a great example of asynchronous communication, but a poor example of synchronous collaboration. 

As we move to a new normal, not all the employees would work remote for most organisations. It would be a different balance for different companies and different teams. Whatever be that balance, it would be more complex than 100% employees working in office or 100% employees working remote. While such a shift in inevitable, the way we work, communicate and collaborate in a complex model needs to evolve as well. 

Disclaimer - Views expressed here are those of the author and should not be considered as views of the employer.