Async Communications Gone Wrong (Ranting included)
⚠️ This is kind of a rant post too. You have been warned! 😅 Also, it’s a lot of scattered thoughts too. I’m sorry if you feel lost somewhere 🙈
Given that a lot of modern and tech based companies have moved from an office setup to a remote working setup - working out of homes or multiple scattered very small offices etc, the mindset of the companies doesn’t seem to have changed much. It feels like they are trying to apply their office setup communication skills in the remote setup which doesn’t seem to work out according to me
Note - When I refer to companies, I’m referring to people in the companies as according to me a company is nothing but a group of people
Let’s dive into what I mean by async communications gone wrong. Do note that this is purely my own opinion and perspective of what’s wrong, and it may not look the same for everyone
Let’s first check what async means. Async is short for asynchronous and you can find it’s meaning in any dictionary including online dictionaries. The definition I got from Merriam-Webster is -
asynchronous: not simultaneous or concurrent in time : not synchronous
Link : https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asynchronous
You can also go check what synchronous means. One definition is -
synchronous: happening, existing, or arising at precisely the same time
Now let’s break it down a bit more for this blog post, because I want to :P In the world of communication, asynchronous communication literally means that - if person A sends a message to person B, then person B doesn’t have to reply immediately or at the same time. Person B can reply to person A at any later point of time.
Asynchronous communication is the kind of communication that many companies are trying to follow when working virtually and remotely and not out of physical offices
So what’s going wrong? Let me give you some real life examples of async communications gone wrong from my experience
Example #1:
Me: * working on something and not noticing my Microsoft Teams chat*
Teammate A (on Microsoft Teams): hey, could do this abcd thing?
Me: * still working and not noticing any messages Microsoft Teams chat. Why? It’s because sometimes Microsoft Teams chat application is closed completely to focus on work or notifications are turned off to avoid many notifications *
Teammate A (on Google Chat): hey, could do this abcd thing?
Me: * still working and not noticing any messages Google chat too. Why? For the same old reasons *
After a few moments, or minutes or an hour or so, I go check the messages and mails and notice same message on two different chat platforms just because our team has access to both company and client chat platforms. And then I finally reply to the messages
See what happened? People are expecting to get replies very soon. I’ll be honest, I sometimes have that expectation too. I’m working on it. But I have never actually pinged people on multiple platforms or called them! I got a call once when I didn’t reply on a chat platform. And guess what? The person on the call always tells “Sorry about the call. It was very important, that’s why I called you”. If you look closely, people tend to use the word important for everything. If everything is important, then the word “important” loses it’s meaning or the person doesn’t know how to use it or doesn’t know how to tag something as important. Guess which one happened? Yeah. The dictionary didn’t change the meaning of “important”, so it’s the people using it in their own to prioritize whatever they see fit, in their eyes
When I think about it, it’s very tricky business actually. I mean, the act of telling someone “Hey, that doesn’t sound important to me. This could have waited” is probably too harsh or might hurt their ego. Maybe there’s a better wording for it. But in my case, I have never discussed or argued about importance to people in such situations and have never picked fights too on such things. Yeah, things can get escalated quickly, you never know.
In my personal experience, the problem with not bringing up such problems, small or big, to people is that people don’t know what they are doing “wrong”. More like, people never know that they are probably disturbing or annoying or pissing off other people with their actions or words or behavior. And if it goes on and on and on, and doesn’t come out explicitly as feedback, at some point it can burst out as a really bad thing and the other person might be surprised at what they did wrong. They might be like “What did I do? Why are you so pissed at me?”
So I think if such situations happen, my current plan is to analyze it, be calm and try to act calm, because when I approach something with anger, things never end well. I’m still working on this. It’s very hard to approach something with calmness when something has annoyed you. I tend to put off the actions I plan to do when I’m in anger, so that the anger subsides eventually so that my rationale mind can think of how to solve the situation and what actions to really take
Let me give you more real life examples of async communications gone wrong
Example #2:
Me: * working on something and not noticing my chat box*
Teammate A (on Chat): hey
After a lot of time, I see this message and then reply back
Me: Hi
Note that “hey” is just an example, there are other forms like “Hi”, “Hi ! “, “Hi Karuppiah”, “Hey Karuppiah”, “Hey Karupps”. The idea is that, they just initiate the conversation with something like “hey” and then don’t say anything else. And I just reply back with something similar usually. These days sometimes I even ignore it until I see more information from the person apart from just a “hey”
You might be wondering why I’m ignoring such messages sometimes, or why is this even a problem. I would recommend you to checkout the below link to understand better -
https://www.nohello.com/2013/01/please-dont-say-just-hello-in-chat.html
After I got aware about this I usually frown on such behavior. But there are exceptions where I’m okay with it - these are rare situations where I know the person very closely and it’s more of an informal communication, contacting after a long time etc where there’s no particular reason / topic for the person to ping me except for communicating casually and random stuff, life stuff. But when it comes to work, I think it’s better to keep it pretty efficient like the above blog post mentions
Efficient how?
- Don’t just say Hi
- Try to communicate and keep it to the point, with some focus. I know this seems too much to ask for. And seems like a perfectionists ask. But I think at some point people will get used to it once they start communicating a lot and get experienced with what works and what doesn’t work for them. Most probably they will also learn how to keep it efficient and to the point
- Have at least some short points around what you wanna say. I actually include longer points too sometimes. But I think many will be pissed at long points
What does inefficient look like? Let’s see an example
Example #3
Teammate: Hi ! Can we get on a quick call? I want to discuss something
Me: What is this about?
Teammate: It’s about XYZ
Me: Okay!
Me: * gets on a virtual online meeting *
After an hour or so
Me: * gets out of the virtual online meeting *
Notice how the thing started out as a “quick call” and burst into a one hour meeting? A quick call is usually never a quick call in my experience. “quick” is so vague. No time constraint. Always try to ask for duration. In my case I also try to stick to it, though I have failed to do so miserably many times. But yeah, I try to stick to it, unless I have more time, or the thing seems important that I could invest more time in it, or if I don’t know how to decently get out of the call, or call out explicitly that the meeting is taking a lot of time
In general it’s good to mention how much time someone needs for a call. If they aren’t sure, at least an estimate should do. Later if it seems like the call is extending beyond the given time / never ending, then measures can be taken for it - like postponing the remaining part, or trying to do more of asynchronous communication
Oh yes! Virtual meetings are synchronous! People get on a meeting and then talk at the same time, it’s almost as good as all the people sitting close by in a round table conference room. Ring any bells? Office setup, yeah!
So what went wrong in the above example? No mention of time and people trying to convert from asynchronous (chat messages) to synchronous (virtual meetings) so that they get what they want immediately and not wait for people to reply to chat messages
Most people are in a hurry, and with less and less planning and more “on-the-go” fashion, only synchronous communication works, because without planning, things need to be done in a hurry and people just try to do this in a synchronous manner, even if async can possibly work in this case too. In general, I think people do what they feel comfortable doing. A popular opinion that I agree with is - with more planning, it’s easier to do more of asynchronous communication. For example - Person A needs that ABCD thing next week? Person A plans it this week, asks people around about it through chat messages, instead of starting the planning next week and then asking people to join virtual meetings
Quick calls with no info on what the call is about is also a problem. People just say “I can only tell more details when we get on a call”
I guess “quick” is one word to look for when looking for possible problematic communications
Example “hey, can we have a quick call” vs “hey, can we have a quick call? We have a question regarding this thing in this project”
Once I have also gone to the extent of mentioning exactly why I wanted someone to join a call that me and few others were already on. I sent a chat message with something along the lines of “Hey, Do you have a few minutes to join this call? We had question about this thing. The status is this but we expected this. We noticed some of them have the expected status. We were wondering you might know why”. I’m pretty proud of doing that. And the person who read my chat message got on the call in a few moments since we had just got off a team meeting. And the person was giving us information immediately since they had some context around what we wanted to ask them
I think there’s always some improvement in the work communications that I get involved in, and I try to make that improvement in the future. Jotting all this down in my blog post is also one way to remember all these improvements! :)
After months of many virtual meetings during this past year, I think I have some aversion to virtual meetings in general. A lot of times I have ended up simply sitting in meetings ranting in my head about why it’s taking so long. When I analyzed why I felt this way, I have come to realize that people tend to talk too much sometimes and it’s too much information to process for me. Funny it’s coming from me, the “too much information”. I know. I (might) kind of look like a hypocrite. I mean, I type so much. It’s so much information to process. But hey (:P), note this - you can leave this blog post anytime. You are not obliged to read it fully. You can read parts, skim through it, or not read at all. You can close the browser tab and do something else 🤷♂️ Of course it’s your wish. But now put this in the context of a virtual meeting at work. It’s work. Many a times it’s not an optional meeting and you are required to attend. In such cases you can’t say no easily, because it’s work, you get paid to do it.
I think that meetings are all good as long the meeting makes sense to the person attending it. The moment it looks useless is where the problem starts.
My personal experience with meetings has been one of these cases -
- Me not checking time. Constantly talking and discussing. Completely dissolved in the topic. What’s the pro? Good engagement on the topic from my side. What’s the Con? If it’s an unnecessary topic or an overkill to talk or think too much on the topic, then it’s just a waste of time and energy. I’ve regretted talking too much a lot of times 🙈
- Me checking the time constantly. Thinking - “Why is this meeting taking so long?”, “Why are people talking so much?”, “Why so much discussion on this thing?”, “Why so much argument on this thing?”, “This is going in circles!”, “This is an overkill for such a trivial topic”
- I know exactly how this whole presentation is going to pan out as I’m part of the team that’s presenting it. But I still have to stay the whole time, and see, and listen to the whole thing that I know already? Exhausting! :/
Personally, virtual meetings in general are too much exhausting for me, for some reason. Probably screen time? I’m yet to check more on it but I have different articles talk about different things around this. The “zoom fatigue” and what not. Since I have trust issues many a times, I don’t trust things just at face value very easily, unless I’m pretty naive at that moment
How to spot an unnecessary meeting? Only you can do that as you know better and only you can define what’s necessary and unnecessary for you. From my experience, if you are looking for one word to see if a meeting is needed or not, “overkill” is one word to look for! If the meeting is an overkill, and just an email or something else is enough, maybe that’s the way instead of a meeting
There are some things where meetings help and work, and some things where meetings are not needed at all. And when meeting is needed, some prep and planning before the meeting helps so that the meeting is short and to the point. You are the best judge to think about this. One example I have read where meetings help is - decision making. People come together in a meeting, after discussions and ideation are already done before hand. Someone who calls the shots takes the decision and then people talk about the decision and then that’s it. Ideation - I think it’s better done asynchronous. I think it’s funny to get on a meeting and then say “hey, I want you to tickle your brain immediately and come up with some useful ideas for this thing. Keep it creative!”
There’s this another thing about meetings, specifically presentation meetings. When I think about it, I think people like to show off their work. I guess it’s a pretty natural thing. People like to show progress. Bosses love to see progress and demand to see progress. What this basically translates to is a meeting where the team tries to show as much progress as possible in the meeting. So, it’s probably a long meeting, where people talk a lot and demo a lot, or just demo a lot. In any case there’s “a lot” of something. People become proud and show off their work to other teams and their bosses and update about the progress and the deadlines etc. Can it be an email? Can it be in some text format? Can it also be summarised in a few lines? I think yes. I always value text content. One good thing about text content is - it can be easily changed, easily searched and low storage and pretty simple. Clearly some demos are hard with text content. Maybe gifs, videos and rich media can help with that I guess. In any case, searching videos, and other rich content requires more powerful tools and it’s still not easy to search every single thing, unlike text, where every single character can be searched. And it’s also harder to modify rich media like images, videos etc, compared to modifying text content where it’s just typing simple characters. But what I have seen is - people do virtual meetings and record them and then share it. Sometimes the service which records the meeting provides separate audio and a transcription too in text format, which may not be perfect due accent issues, or audio noise etc but usually it’s good enough. One can use that text to read or search the text in it. The video is still hard to process, one has to look at the video and search for info by going back and forth or looking at most of the video or the whole video. Not to mention, text format is very accessible too which makes the content more inclusive by helping more people to consume it even if they have disabilities. Many simply tools can easily take text as input and make it accessible for disabled people. Again in such cases too, rich media is hard to process, but yeah, not impossible, just hard, in my opinion, compared to processing text.
Till now we have checked out about chats (asynchronous) and meetings (synchronous) in general and seen some examples too. Let’s move on to some more topics
Direct Messages vs Public / Group Messages
In the area of chats, let’s talk a bit about Direct Messages (DMs) also called as Private Messages (PMs) and also about Public Messages - I mean group / bigger group messages
I think it’s good to use public messages as much as possible, where more people can look at the message. When I say more people - I mean a bigger group, as big as possible. But yeah, I sometimes tend to avoid public messages when it doesn’t make sense for many people in the group to look at the message. It’s something that one can think about on a case by case basis
Cases where I feel public messages are helpful are - when the recommended way is public. For example - to get help or support from a team or group, it’s good to start from their public group or public team email ID. Later, if needed, private messages to some particular person or smaller group can be sent. Also, it’s good to have public messages so that anyone can read and get the context. The key thing here is - The context is public when messages are public. Public context can help with getting help - anyone can read and help and not just one person to whom you sent a DM. Public context also means many people are witness to what’s going on in the thread. If you need witnesses then public is the way to go. Public messages also means many people can pitch-in in a discussion like thread to get suggestions, ideas. I have noticed discussions are better when started public mostly. In some cases, like developer huddles in my previous company, people discuss privately as a small group first and come up with some points though, kind of like seed points, to keep the conversation and discussion going rather than start the discussion from zero points or ideas. This is because sometimes if no one has any idea in the discussion and there’s no seed point or idea, finally you have nothing - no outcome. That’s sad 🙈
Many times I have seen people using more and more of private messages when it’s perfectly okay for message to be public in my opinion. Sometimes, when private messages are used, and then when people want to share context with more people, I have seen people add create a group, or add more people to the current chat box / group chat box and give them access to the history of the chat box too. This is also one way to move from private to less private or public chats to share context
Status
Many chat platforms now allow you set a status which shows if you are online and available, or busy and other similar statuses. Some even allow you to set your own words as status along with emojis! 😁
I recommend you to set good status messages so that people know if you are available or not with ease. I believe that many people are empathetic and will understand that you are not available. But if it’s ambiguous as to if you are available or not, then people might try to reach you in other ways to check if you are available
Chat message seen status feature
Many chat platforms now have this feature of chat messages seen status. With this feature, if a message sent by person A is opened then person A can see that the message has been opened.
I think this is a good and a bad feature. How? Let’s see! For people sending messages, it’s good in a way that the sender knows that the receiver read it. But hey, beware. This is the digital word. And many things can go wrong and many assumptions are possible. Software can go wrong. Or, the receiver could have opened the message but it’s possible that they didn’t read it and then closed it to read later and then forgot about it later. And I think this is very much possible! If you have received messages and done this, you can relate to it.
For receivers this feature can be tricky. For example I would be explicitly ignoring someone’s “Hi” message when I see it and I won’t reply to it. The sender will probably assume I read it, though it’s not a sure thing for them. This can send out a signal that I’m being harsh. Sometimes what I tend to do is - I utilize the chat message’s other features like previewing what messages I have received by not even opening it. Just the start of it is usually shown by the chat platform. If it’s just one message (message count notification) and just a small “hi” message, then the preview shows it and I will avoid opening it, and I can ignore implicitly but sender will think I haven’t seen it noticing that the chat message seen status is “not read”, as I never opened the message
I have recently started to talk about nohello and about such communication “mishaps”, as I consider them as mishaps, when I get “Hi” messages
Conclusion
So, those are some of my thoughts around async communications and how they have gone wrong for me and how they can go possibly wrong