How challenging traditional approaches can benefit Board members and improve the outcome of their meetings

Often, how we work best as a team isn’t our top priority – you just get on with it. Using chats, calls, meetings and emails as appropriate, with the odd grumble about how busy we all are to make us feel better about it all.

Following a certain pandemic, how we work best - synchronous vs asynchronous communication – is firmly in the spotlight. How you and your Board bring together these two approaches will end up defining how productive you are.

What is synchronous and asynchronous communication?

First the basics…

• 💬 Synchronous communication happens in real time – meetings, calls, conversations, instant messenger tools

• 📧 Asynchronous communication means interaction without real-time conversation — the most common example being email.

Benefits of asynchronous

There are plenty of benefits to asynchronous communication that are easy to forget in our new world of Zoom/Teams calls. For example:

• The freedom to plan your workday based on your most productive hours, and the flexibility to spend extended periods on more important tasks

• It tends to be of higher quality than knee-jerk responses. Allowing you to think through a particular idea, gather your thoughts, and offer responses when you’re ready

• These responses – being automatically captured in writing – can be referenced in the future, improving transparency, Board knowledge and audit trails

How to get more from your meetings

• Manage repetitive tasks asynchronously, ensuring they’re only ‘upgraded’ to a slot at the Board meeting when in need of a live discussion

So should we use more of email then?

Of course not! Because being a Board member is not a full-time role, managing Board responsibilities is not suited to email:

• Emails have no care for your priorities and are instead a list of everyone else’s, the latest email in, sitting proudly at the top

• With emails you are viewing messages from every corner of your life in one go, thus context switching every 30 seconds

• There is no hierarchy for emails addressed to you, versus those you are copied in on

How Knowa helps

At Knowa we recognise the potential for asynchronous communication tools to improve Board productivity, which is why we embedded it into the Knowa platform from the start. Our ambition is to reduce the burden on Board members, thus enhancing their effectiveness and the outcomes for their members and stakeholders.

If any of this resonates with you, we’d love to share ideas and hear about how you’re looking to improve productivity with your Board.