How Asynchronous Tools Help You Overcome Many Challenges at Work

Outline of the article:

• Asynchronous as a category
• New challenges require new solutions
• Understanding asynchrony
• How it looks to work at an asynchronous company
• The current state of the asynchronous market
  • Global view of the market
  • Asynchronous companies
    • Asynchronous video coordination
    • Asynchronous meetings management
    • Asynchronous collaboration
    • Asynchronous podcasting
    • Asynchronous video communications
    • Asynchronous data collection
    • Asynchronous social audio
    • Asynchronous learning
    • Asynchronous messaging

• What do all asynchronous companies have in common?
• Summary

Asynchronous as a category

In a strange turn of events, the pandemic allowed us to regain time by working remotely, but now we can take it one step further by making it asynchronous.

This fancy word just means that work happens in your own time. You choose when to work, when to talk, when to engage, and when not to. Time becomes an even more tangible and malleable asset than ever before.

Ever since humankind started engraving their thoughts in stone (e.g. cave paintings), we’ve seen the need to develop asynchronous communication and work. Tablet and papyrus writings enabled the transfer of accurate information between places and over time. Workers and soldiers could take commands, written days or weeks ago, and implement them asynchronously.

Technology has taken a lot of time to evolve and people like the Greek messenger Pheidippides sacrificed themselves to compensate for the slow tech advancements. But luckily, today no one has to die for a lack of better asynchronous tools.   

It’s not a new idea, but we’ve made it better. Much better.

New challenges require new solutions

The pandemic has forced us into a new work model. It’s a framework that has completely changed how we coordinate with our teammates and carry out our tasks.

The numbers speak for themselves:

-        Remote work:  25% of all professional jobs in North America are expected to be remote by the end of 2022, while 89% of European companies anticipate a hybrid workforce at the end of the pandemic.

-        Flexible hours: 23% of the workforce in 7 developed countries across the world currently works flexible hours.

-        Teams across multiple time zones: 73% of remote workers across 5 developed countries report that their companies operate most frequently in 2 to 5 time zones.

With these changes in workplace dynamics, we are experiencing a handful of challenges.

Schedules have become a nightmare. Real-time meetings are time-consuming. Synchronous work constantly interrupts people from their workflow and makes them unproductive. Instead of prioritizing important work, you endlessly tackle the most urgent matters that get you nowhere.

You end up putting more effort, more time, and frankly less work gets done.

We need a different input-output approach to business-making and this is where asynchrony comes in.

Understanding asynchrony

Anything that happens outside real-time is asynchronous.

Whether it’s work, where people complete tasks at different times, or communication, where interactions are sequential, we become decoupled from the “always available” mentality.

We’re used to synchrony. We all follow the same schedule and are expected to answer in a timely manner. People are usually in the same time zone and they attend frequent meetings (face-to-face or online).

When we switch to asynchrony, people start working independently (personal schedule), they reply when it’s convenient for them, and can easily work from any time zone.

We still get to work and talk with others but not necessarily at the same time. We not only overcome time constraints but more importantly, we give people their time back. They can now choose when to work and when to interact within certain limits of course.

How it looks to work at an asynchronous company

Here’s an example that will help you grasp the idea.

As an early bird, you like to start work at 6:30 am. You check your email, some Slack chats, and Asana entries (async) to get an update from yesterday’s events. Your boss left your team a video input (async) detailing some key things to consider for the next milestone. In addition, your teammates already left some audio comments (async) on the post thread to clarify a couple of things.

You prioritize your morning work session and start tackling each task. At 11:00 am you take a break. You rapidly answer some emails (async), leave an audio update on your progress in your boss’ video thread (async), and go out to do some errands. A few hours later you meet with a client for lunch (sync), get one last errand done for the day, and continue work from a café nearby. You’re still full from your last meal but you need that coffee to wake you up. Thankfully, you’ve left some easier tasks for the evening session.

To finish things off, you get on a one-on-one call (sync), previously scheduled, with one of your teammates who’s just starting his morning routine in another country. It’s 7:00 pm and you call it a day. Tomorrow you’ll just do some work in the evening since it’s your brother’s birthday and you’re all going to an all-day event out of the city.

How does it sound?

Even if the majority of your work and interactions are asynchronous, it doesn’t mean that there’s no space for some synchronous tasks. It’s not an all-or-nothing scenario, and part of the flexibility of an asynchronous job implies fitting in some sync communication once in a while.

The current state of the asynchronous market

Global view of the market

The asynchronous industry is not a unified field. It’s divided into several branches depending on what solution they offer to their clients:

-        Education: from its 2018 valuation of $18.2 billion, the global e-learning market revenue is expected to surpass $74 billion in 2016 (19.2% CAGR), with the asynchronous learning type accounting for over 51% of the total share.

-        Team collaboration software: from its 2021 valuation of $21.7 billion, the global market revenue is expected to reach $56.7 billion in 2030 (9.5% CAGR), of which an important part refers to asynchronous tools.

-        Messaging apps: from its 2021 valuation of $21.4 billion, the global market revenue for this industry is expected to reach almost $41 million in 2028 (9.6% CAGR).

Asynchronous companies

Apart from looking at some general growth trends by market type, it’s fascinating to see how much support some of these asynchronous companies have received until now.

Claap might be on the path to dethrone Zoom. This French-based startup is aiming to increase asynchronous meetings by getting people off the frequent (but usually unproductive) 30-minute catch-up video calls. Instead, employees record short videos of them on a specific topic, let colleagues view the video and respond before a deadline, and record decisions for everyone to see whenever they want. With a $3 million pre-seed funding and over 30 angel investors, Claap could change our video-calling habits for the better.

Swell is the antidote to how we currently engage in social media. With an increase in polarization across groups and fewer authentic online interactions, this audio-driven social platform aims to improve how we talk with each other. By making posts asynchronous, people are encouraged to have thoughtful conversations and listeners can easily catch up with the conversation. The voice-based social platform has secured $3 million in funding to take us one step further into a more genuine approach to social media.    

If you’re like me, two examples aren’t enough to satiate your thirst for this revolutionary industry. Without further ado, let your curiosity run wild with the following list of asynchronous companies:

Asynchronous video coordination

Asynchronous meetings management

Asynchronous collaboration

Asynchronous podcasting

Asynchronous video communications

Asynchronous data collection

Asynchronous social audio

Asynchronous learning

Asynchronous messaging

What do asynchronous companies have in common?

They all aim to give more autonomy to every worker. The employees are empowered to choose when and where to carry out their tasks.

-        They tackle the problem of time more effectively: schedules, time zones, workflow, documentation, and other work-related operations become easier and more efficient.

-        They enhance productivity. Everything is documented and easily accessible, people are not interrupted during their work process, and mental health is prioritized (e.g. free from the “always online” mentality).

The list can go on, but the key idea to keep in mind is that all these different solutions aim to make life easier and simpler. Asynchrony is an upgrade to our interactions and work dynamics.

So what does this future look like? Our next articles will walk you through the future of asynchronous audio, how content is created, how the world is powered by voice, and how we use sound to shape our surroundings. Stay tuned for more!

Summary

Asynchronous tools give people back their time by leaving them in charge of when and where they engage with work. The challenges of this new model of work and communications have led many companies to create asynchronous tools to meet its multiple requirements. And the future development of this industry has never looked so bright.