4 March 2024

The ASYNC-FIRST PLAYBOOK by Sumeet Gayathri Moghe - My view

by ramesh ramalingam

The Async-First Playbook photo with plant in outdoor

TL;DR: If you don’t have patience for lengthy prose, jump to the summary for a quick view.

Hello friends!

In early 2008, one of my friends told me that he was quitting his current job and going to work for an European company, but from Pollachi (a small town in western Tamil Nadu), his hometown. It was a big shock for all of our friends. This became a hot topic during our tea breaks the following days. None of us believed it was a sustainable idea. We convinced ourselves that he would come back to the office very soon. But it never happened. Since then, I have heard here and there that people are working remotely. But they were mostly exceptions.

Meanwhile, I joined thoughtworks, where we have open tables and are encouraged to work collaboratively. Even though I felt insecure initially, as people can peek at my screen without any effort, I got comfortable over time. My day usually starts on one side of the table and ends on the other end. As a tech lead, I was quite comfortable navigating near my teammates whenever they or I needed to work together. Remote work was never on my radar of thoughts.

But all changed in a day—the day curfew called out, the day when we were ordered to stay inside our home and continue our normal lives. To be frank, it wasn’t that bad initially. Our team had built a very good Rappot before COVID. It helped us immensely in breaking the barriers set by distance. Though it wasn’t a smooth sail, it wasn’t rough water either. No one knows what time is hiding behind it. So do I. In mid-2020, I moved to a new project. It was completely a new team; none had met before, and some were newer to the organization’s culture as well. The real challenge has begun here. We had a lot of differences in how things were to be done, and a lot of knowledge needed to be transferred from one to another at regular intervals. This wouldn’t have been a bigger issue prior to COVID. But then things were different. No team bonding. Most of the time, we do not even see the face of the person we are talking with. They also fueled the existing difference, and slowly we started becoming prisoners of meetings.

Though I moved to other projects, the challenges remained the same. Meetings. lots of meetings. Everybody is in meetings. The unanimous slogans I could hear were “I am stuck in meetings.” and “I am unable to do anything meaningful.” Thanks to active communities of thoughtworks. The hiveminds were sharing their ideas and tools, which had helped reduce the pain of meetings.

That’s where I found articles by Summet about remote and async first working. What I was searching for was to reduce the pain of remote working, but Sumeet was arguing about how remote and async first work will be our future and can address issues in office working too. Initially, I was unsure of the practicality of his suggestions. However, once we started implementing the ideas from his articles, we started witnessing positive changes in the team.

When I heard about Sumeet’s The Async-First Playbook, I was really happy and had faith that it would be a realiable guide for anyone who wanted to work remotely. I got a copy of the book last month, and here are my views on it.

Content

Though I was predominantly talking about remote working in my intro, as the name of the book goes, this is about being async first, not just remote first. There is a big difference between them. Sumeet claverly starts the book with an anecdote and creates consciousness about async first in us. This helps us a lot in the later chapters to understand his point of view.

For better understanding, let me make it short. The remote first team has members separated by distance and timezones and works together for a common goal. However, in addition, the Async-first team tied themselves to a Ulysses pact, Meeting as the last resort.

Sumeet divided the book into five parts and addressed most of the questions we will have when kicking off with Async first as a practice. Don’t worry; Sumeet has done a fantastic job of explaining them in detail. So let me just pick a few pearls out and discuss them here.

Meeting as the last resort

You might have heard below groans from your colleagues and friends often.

I am buried between meetings

I am double booked

I am stuck in meetings all day, I am unable to do anything usful and the list goes on.

I always wondered what we were really solving in those meetings. Are all those missions critical? Can’t we accommodate some delay? (These are the same questions I jump into when I see people rushing on the roads without valuing their or others lives.) But how many of us really give it a pause and think about the output of our unliked meetings? What are the steps we have taken so far to sort them out? Yes. Some might have tried some alternatives sincerely, but even they get lost in the current.

Sumeet chants the mantra Meeting as the last resort as a relief from the pain of meetings. No worries. It is not a placebo, but it has a real cure. He provides them with tools and techniques on how to make the workplace better for everyone. As Sumeet calls out in many places of this book, he does not argue for no meeting but to do syncronous meetings as the last option. He suggests ConveRel Matrix as a tool to quickly decide which communication mode can work for our current context.

Be inclusive

வல்லான் வகுத்ததே வாய்க்கால்

Let me start with the above Tamil proverb, which translates to Might is right. Extroverts, native English speakers, and quick thinkers are “the mightier” in syncronous meetings. It is comfortable for them to share their opinions in a noisy meeting where at least someone is talking about something. This leaves no or very little space for marginal sections of sync meetings, like introverts, people with disabilities, and non-native English speakers, to share their perspectives.

Sumeet argues how we can empower this marginal group by shifting left in the `Synchronousness Chart’. This gives people more time and space to think, ponder the problem statement, and come up with meaningful contributions. The decision gets better when we are able to accommodate everyone’s perspective and input. Sumeet brings in options like collaborative documents, wikis, and more and details how a team can embrace them.

The native vs. non-native English speaker argument is based on the assumption that English is the primary communication language in our meetings. You can replace it with any other language that is the primary language in your meetings.

Written communication, the Async-First superpower

Really! Is writing a superpower? How can scribbling something with a pen or typing on a keyboard be a superpower? You might think it is an exaggeration. But I completely agree with Sumeet here. Writing is not merely a pen and paper thing. It is a process of curating your random thoughts, pruning unwanted ones, and making them better structured so that anyone who reads understands them better.

Sumeet has dedicated a whole chapter to written communication and explains how it really helps in real life and how to write better. I really like the idea of Be a journalist. He also argues how it can become an asset to the team.

Pragmatic book

As the name of the book suggests, Sumeet wrote it as a practical guide for anyone who wants to implement Async-First. Every section of the book has relevant tools and templates listed. Anyone who is implementing Async-First can use these tools with no or few tweaks. He has also curated all the resources on his online portal for easy access. Refer Async Agile book resources

It took me nearly a month to finish the book, which has a little more than 300 pages. Negating my laziness, the richness of the content is one of the primary reasons. In a good way, I had to slow down every now and then to grasp the content, as the chaters are richer and more concise. The twenty-plus-page reference section serves as proof of the hard work behind this book.

Production

I read the physical version of the book. Though it weighed around 700 grams, I never felt it heavy on my hands. Initially, I was uncomfortable with the text size and felt it was smaller. But moving on, it was not an issue. Blame should go to the habit of reading in electronic formats, primarily. Another glitch is that I often try to zoom in on the pictures, especially when they have smaller texts.

I never felt I missed the flow of content. The book is structured very well to keep us tied to the flow until the end of the book. No lalala or any unwanted diversions.

Summary

The pandemic impacted every life on earth, one way or another. While most were bitter, a few were pleasant. One such thing was the impact on our way of working. When remote working was an exception, the pandemic forced us to make it a new normal. It fueled thought-provoking ideas and tools to support remote working. Among them, I see Sumeet’s The Async First Playbook as an important work. The key thing is that Sumeet does not stop at just preaching; rather, he builds, tries, and shares workable guides and tools for us to create a better remote and async-first environment. Sumeet split the book into five parts and addressed the potential concerns one gets when starting to follow async-first.

Sumeet highlights inclusivity and deep work as the primary benefits of async-first practice. As he mentions, Async first empowers marginal sections of office work (introverts, non-native English speakers, single parents, women, and more) to contribute better by providing the space and time they need. He also advocates how async-first can be a tool to enable deep work in teams.

I believe every book has something for anyone who reads it, so give it a try, irrespective of where or how you work. But this is a must-read for every knowledge worker. It will help you create a better work environment for you and your colleagues.

Links & References

Happy reading!!!

tags: book - review - async - async-first - sumeet

Blank Notebook

Experiences, Thoughts & Reviews