“Flexibility” was one of the biggest factor that 77% job seekers look for in their prospective career, according to Havard Business Review, a benefit that allows them to work anywhere they want. In addition, 61% of which prefer the management team allows them to work whenever they need to be in the office, coined by the term “autonomy”.
To make that happen, companies adopt remote/hybrid working, then meeting, meeting, meeting for frequent check-in. Some achieved the goal of employee work-life balance, some resulted in long-hour meeting (2-3 hour), and resolve little issue and cause enormous fatigue for all parties involved.
For a long time, I realized that, most of org hiccups comes from miscommunication:
- “I told you in the last meeting”
- “We’re not solving anything in this meeting”
- “Did I say that?”
then:
- lack of trust
- losing employee
It all revolves around meeting, meeting, and meeting. Which is, for me, the form of communication that should only be used the least and only be used when necessary, and not frequently. Period.
1. Asynchronous Communication
Formula: Asynchronous + Less meeting → Deep work
Asynchronous communication allows for communication to happen at different times, which can lead to less meetings and more deep work. When communication does not need to happen in real-time:
- gives people the opportunity to focus on their tasks without the distraction of synchronous communication
- keep teams productive and engaged, leading to improved results in the long run
It’s not infrequent to hear that “Our meeting just went forever”, “too much meeting”, “ineffective meeting”, etc. In corporate
2. Transparency
Trust is one of the essential components in any organization. Building trust amongst team members and between teams can boost employee loyalty and foster a healthy working environment.
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Strong writing culture helps to create a single source of truth:
- Keep everyone on the same page, boost productivity and organizational transparency.
- With clear and concise communication, team members can quickly understand the task and make informed decisions.
This allows for an efficient flow of information and reduces the possibility of miscommunication.
3. Autonomy
Imagine you onboard a new employee, that (presumably) cost:
- Introduce to new employee: 15 minutes
- Training company culture: 2-4 hours
- Technology introduction: 1-2 hours
Which could be replaced by:
- Onboarding guide (reading)
- Culture guideline (reading)
- Technology guideline (reading)
- ..and zero human resource (or as little as 30 minutes)
The thing is “document, document, and document”, say it once, document it then you don’t have to say it twice.
đź’ˇ Writing culture in practice
In our internal team at Vucar, we adopt Notion as a single source of truth:
- For every update (tasks, features, announcements), we write
- We list all training courses and their content
- Every meeting is well documented in a form of meeting minutes
So that:
- Every new employee, zero (or approaching zero) effort to train
- Meeting isn’t required just to pass repetitive information
