Before remote work, meetings had some value because you were all in the same room and could have organic discussions. Now every meeting is scheduled zoom calls with awkward silences and people on mute.
Most could be replaced with a loom video or written document. But we keep having meetings because that's what we did before and nobody wants to be the first to stop.
Is synchronous communication actually necessary for most work or are we just recreating office culture virtually because we don't know how else to work?
Remote work means every meeting could have been an email
byu/Aware-Version-23 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Aware-Version-23
8 Comments
What’s one type of meeting your team still does that you think could easily be replaced with async communication?
70/30 – 70% of meetings could be an email. 30% need to happen to get things done quickly and clearly.
I completely agree. Most “meetings” only serve to create the illusion of collaboration, but they are rarely effective.
I’ve found that asynchronous communication (like Loom videos and a shared Notion document or project board) leads to better decision-making because everyone has time to think before responding.
The key is to implement clear systems: who needs to know what, by when, and where to find the information. Once these systems are in place, the number of meetings naturally decreases by 70%. It’s not that people hate meetings, it’s just that they hate pointless ones.
> Before remote work, meetings had some value because you were all in the same room and could have organic discussions. Now every meeting is scheduled zoom calls with awkward silences and people on mute.
In person meetings certainly allow for better communication, but I find that awkward silences and people being on mute only becomes a problem when meetings go over having 5 people.
> Most could be replaced with a loom video or written document.
I don’t think this would be an effective replacement, as most wouldn’t watch the video or read the document to truly absorb the information.
> Is synchronous communication actually necessary for most work or are we just recreating office culture virtually because we don’t know how else to work?
The answer comes down to the management and the operations of your own company. For my company, what you state and claim in this post couldn’t be further from the truth, but we have always been remote first.
Thanks for sharing this
I disagree. I’d say when people are working remotely it is even more important that things are decided in a timely manner and with consensus. This is impossible to do via email.
I don’t like group chats on my phone and I don’t like email chains at work. Too hard to keep track of who said what and when. Would much rather do a 30 minute meeting if there are more than 3 people involved. If it’s just 2 of us I don’t really consider that a meeting but would rather discuss via Teams.
I don’t know how it’s 2025 and every video conferencing software out there has the visual and sound quality of a 1980s cable channel’s scramble porn.