There’s an overlooked power tool right in front of us. Every individual and organization can use it well, but rarely does. I could write a book on this, but here’s the post instead:
Synchronized work happens together, on a shared schedule, in real time.
Asynchronized work (my spellchecker says this isn’t a real word) happens on our schedule.
Phone calls are sync. Texts are async.
Network TV was sync. Youtube and Netflix are async.
Writing a screenplay is async. Making a movie from that screenplay is sync. Going to opening night is sync, watching it two months later online is async.
Writing a book is async. Publishing a book is sync. Reading it is async.
A staff meeting is sync. A memo is async.
Commercial air travel is sync. A private jet is async.
Each offers costs and advantages.
When I go to a live concert, it’s happening. For me, for the audience, for the act. If any of us is having a bad day, it detracts from the experience. But when it’s right and it’s real, magic ensues. It’s largely unrelated from the experience of listening to the same song streamed (async) or on the radio (a blend of the two).
I imagine that your energy levels and mood fluctuate during the day. When working on async projects, the smart path is to match your internal energy with the work to be done. Write blog posts when you’re on a post-swim high, pay bills when all you can manage is clerical work.
Organizations that don’t account for the cost of sync-meetings waste not just billions of dollars but the insight and energy of the people who might be able to contribute if the timing and approach were different.
Sync has three advantages:
Energy multiplies. When someone is contributing, others seek to catch up. When someone has a good idea, others might work to top it. We have the chance to create an environment that multiplies the effort of all those involved.
It can be more efficient. The donut shop can’t have the frosting person frost whenever it’s convenient. They have to frost right after the donuts come out of the fryer. Many processes depend on the right people being in the right place at the right time.
One form of this efficiency is that the contributor can see, in real time, how the recipient responds and act accordingly.
It offers command, control and (one kind of) inspection.
But it has costs and risks:
Energy also spirals down. When a team member is emotionally disconnected or physically absent, the entire interaction can suffer.
It can less efficient. There’s less room for slack and resilience, and assembling the right people at the right time comes at a premium. There’s a lot of sitting around on a movie set.
It doesn’t usually match the needs of the worker or the market.
It makes it difficult to be intentional and clear about the details of the work or the arc of the project.
The implications are everywhere we look, and the status quo works to maintain its sync or async status.
Media companies that are in love with whatever sync/async built their organization often flounder when the media consumption axis flips. The only reason Amazon and Netflix exist is that their sync predecessors couldn’t figure out how to deal with an async relationship with the customer. And now that Netflix has a huge advantage, they’re timid about shifting some of the content to a sync model that would create more buzz… and Amazon has failed to capture the real-time shopping experience that’s so common online in China.
When we were forced to work from home six years ago, offices freaked out. Some embraced the async magic it offered, while many bosses were at a loss on how to manage people they couldn’t see in real time.
One reason is that employees had been indoctrinated in the idea that work was what you did when someone was watching. If you were ‘working’ from home, it was okay to also do errands and a workout, because without a hall monitor, you were off the clock.
On the other hand, some used the freedom the way a productive writer does. Without the distractions of real-time sync, there was plenty of time to get some actual work done.
Once you see it, all sorts of new insights come to mind:
The handoffs. Much of the leverage and the friction in our modern world lives at the points where work switches modes. A deadline, for example, is a sync point imposed on async work.
Who owns the clock? Sync is more than a scheduling choice, it’s also a display of power. The person who calls the meeting has already decided to spend everyone else’s time. Bosses call meetings; the employee sends a memo.
Async moves power from the coordinator to the creator.
Flips are opportunities. Why are college applications async, while job interviews are sync? Kickstarter turned product launches async, and Ted Turner turned news into something that broke.
Fake async. Over time, async creeps toward sync. It’s ironic that Slack messages, texts and email which succeeded because they were async, now create an expectation of real-time response. These are async tools used with sync expectations, so you get the interruptions of sync without its energy.
Name it. Protect your work style and the expectations for what you deliver. Organizations can be more mindful of the cost of sync, and creators can properly price their effort for each kind of work. There’s a reason it costs a million dollars to have Bob Dylan sing at your birthday party.
Sync creates cultural side effects. When everyone at the watercooler is talking about the same thing, cultural cohesion follows. When Netflix moved to binge viewing, they used their capital advantage to make it very hard for others to keep up by producing enough shows. But by sticking with this moat, they’ve diminished word of mouth. Far more people talked about Nathan Fielder’s movie during launch week than ever talked about his streaming show.
AI is currently async. An agent never needs a meeting and works at 3 a.m., so humans become the sync bottleneck. But as its power increases, expect AI to be a partner in most sync events.
Trust is built in sync and spent in async. Async works better between people who already know each other. New teams, new hires, and new customer relationships may need sync at first. The alternative is to build systems that are async by nature, enabling new participants to earn trust in powerful new ways. Online reputation systems and thoughtful online communities are getting better at this.
Here are three simple axioms to start the process with:
Don’t make something synchronized unless it delivers valuable advantages over work done asynchronously. Show your work and defend your choice.
When you’re doing async work, match it to your internal chemistry. Get more done, but in a different order than it’s assigned.
Pay attention to the shifts from one to another. That’s where opportunities and pitfalls lie.
Futility: It might feel like it doesn’t matter. Fear: Of choosing wrong, or doing it wrong. Responsibility: It isn’t given, it’s taken. Which is why so many leave it on the table. Possibility: Showing up to have your say could change things for the better. Identity: This is what people like us do, it’s part of being in this community. Defiance: Some would rather you stay home. Your vote is a limit on their plans. Gratitude: For the people who came before, and for the ones who never had the chance. Dignity: Because for a moment, everyone ought to have the same impact. Solidarity: Standing with the others when they choose to stand with us. Hope: This may be our best chance to make things better.
That’s a lot to dance with from one single action. I think it’s worth it.
That changes everything. This is the spot, your spot, a spot worth protecting. Trees understand the power of the neighborhood and the value of good neighbors.
Trees can’t be anonymous, and they succeed by standing tall and sticking it out. Trees do better in a forest, surrounded by other trees.
And trees think in long time frames, because now keeps changing but later is the actual urgency.
Trees are mortal. And so generations are the actual long game. Fires and floods will come and go, but the seeds spread and flourish.
As humans, we often underestimate the gift of new decisions, new locations and the ability to quit and move on.
And just as often, we miss the chance to plant roots and stand for something.
The slogan is “when you care enough to send the very best.”
But more accurately, it’s “when you don’t care enough to be on the hook.”
For a low-stakes social interaction, the Hallmark card is a convenient and safe solution. Low-risk, it gets the job done. People don’t blame you for letting someone from Kansas say a nice thing on your behalf.
Now, it’s happening at scale. If you want to be left off the hook, AI is a convenient excuse. Do what it says. Ask it what to dress up as for this Halloween, or what to write in your marketing copy. Let it design your website or write your resume. Perhaps you could have it write your wedding vows as well.
Our culture prizes convenience ahead of just about everything else, and AI slop is convenient. It saves us time but it also saves us emotional labor.
The dilemma is obvious. Unlike a Hallmark card, AI is available to do just about everything. And when we’ve streamlined our life to a convenient nub of its former self, then what?
There’s a different path. Insist that AI ask you questions. Challenge it to challenge you.
Then choose. Sign your work.
AI isn’t the cause of slop, and it’s not a good excuse for slop either.
Last week’s book list was a success, and I realized that it would work even better with others. Bookstores work precisely because they stack the books right next to each other.
Even though each of these authors has a book out this fall, they’re not my competition. Too often, we avoid cooperation because we’re embracing scarcity.
Each of us will be linking to thehotlist.org today. Ideas that spread, win. The page automatically updates based on which books get clicked on the most.
What happens when you help connect and organize the others?
This is one of the most famous comedy bits of all time:
But why is it funny? The disconnect between experiencing it and explaining it represents one of the challenges of teaching. It’s also at the heart of leadership, marketing and culture.
Design, good taste, genre, communication style–these are all human endeavors that inform our days, but most of the time, we’re at a loss to explain them.
Abbott and Costello are avatars, approachable and relatable to their audience. You can see yourself as one or the other, depending on the moment. They’ve plotted an intricate dialogue, one that builds on itself, gaining traction and increasing tension as it goes. And as each expresses their frustration with the situation (and to a degree, with each other), it’s easy to put ourselves in their shoes.
We’ve never been in this exact situation, but we’ve all experienced a moment like this.
Most of us are in on the joke as we watch it. We know it’s a joke, and we understand early on the nature of the wordplay. So much so that the sketch itself becomes an icon, one that others are based on, sometimes with great fidelity:
Funny even before the reign of U2. So iconic that it’s now a three-word shorthand.
We can have the same discussion about your logo. Or why your book cover is less than it could be.
When someone is designing a bridge, we don’t have to wonder if the engineer “gets it.” The metrics are obvious and easily measured. We have precise words and numbers that are external to our own experience and the zeitgeist, and whether a person or a machine does the calculations, it works or it doesn’t.
But much of the rest of the human experience is often too layered and nuanced to be reduced to a simple formula. We need to notice enough and engage enough to get it. That’s what Heinlein was talking about when he coined the 60s term grok.
When a municipality sets aside the resources to build a ‘signature’ bridge, their own Golden Gate, there’s often a conflict. Not just disagreement about the need for something more than the utility of moving across the river, but also understanding what beautiful and important even looks like. Some people don’t get it.
Saying “that’s not funny,” or “I think it’s ugly,” is easy. The difficult work is acknowledging that someone else might disagree.
Human emotions require a viewer, not just a creator. The funny, the beauty, the elegance: they happen for someone, in their experience.
“That’s not beautiful,” is not the same as, “I don’t think that’s beautiful.”
I don’t have to explain a joke or a sculpture or a logo. But I do have to know enough to imagine that someone else is going to get it. We can choose to care enough to figure out why someone gets something we don’t, and imagine what it might take to create something human enough that others will care about it.
At a recent Q&A, a small businessperson asked how to get clients to be more alike, willing to engage in systemic work that would be easier to deliver and offer a simpler path to getting the job done.
Of course, once there’s a manual, anyone can do the work, and anyone will.
It might be the complex, fickle and unpredictable problems that allow the professional to thrive.
When things don’t turn out the way you pictured, how long does it take for you to move on?
Reducing this window of disappointment unlocks the path to creativity and leadership.
People who get over disappointment more quickly aren’t less excited about the project than the others. They realize that getting attached to an outcome doesn’t increase its likelihood, and in fact, makes it less likely that their next project will be as bold.
Turns out that this is a common practice among professionals in every field.
If the stakes are high enough and the duration you need to keep it together is short enough, can you control your response?
Because if we can do it then, we can learn to do it now. Acknowledging that it’s a choice is difficult, because choices come with responsibility. “I’m not a patient person,” is not the same as, “Being patient requires a lot of work for me.”
Attitudes are skills. Like all skills, they take practice, preparation and effort.
