Twist & Shout: Async tools for Remote Teams
Today we wanted to highlight Twist - the business messaging tool from the team at Doist (known for their highly successful To Do list app Todoist).
Not only is it an interesting tool within the business communication ecosystem, it also allows us to spend a little time talking about an important concept of remote-first work: async communication.
While Slack & Teams largely have the market cornered on corporate messaging, Twist is taking a different approach. As they put it, Twist is "async messaging for teams burned out by real-time, all-the-time communication and ready for a new way of working together."
Asynchronous work is the idea of working, well, asynchronously. In other words: not at the same time. Most organizations use a combination of sync and async communication styles. Examples of synchronous communication include video calls, phone calls, in-person conversations and instant messaging chat tools. Examples of asynchronous communication include email (depending on company culture), project management tools where updates are made and comments added (e.g. Asana, Jira, Trello), and in-app comments on working docs (e.g. in Google Docs, Power Point Decks, GitHub).
Remote organizations, particularly those with teams distributed across the globe, lean more heavily on async communication. It's not possible to always connect in real-time, and leveraging async tools and project organization enables teams to collaborate seamlessly while maintaining the many benefits of remote work.
Doist, a fully remote organization, developed Twist first for internal purposes. In 2015 they adopted Slack and 2 years later they quit it cold turkey in favor of Twist. As their founder Amir Salihefendic said "It was fun, but the honeymoon with real-time chat didn't last. We spanned 10 time zones and needed an async tool to work."
So what makes Twist different?
No presence indicator. Is your boss online? You don't know. And they don't know if you're online. The goal is to not have digital 'face-time', it's to communicate your ideas.
No typing dots. You don't know if they're online, so why would you see them typing? You shouldn't expect a response immediately anyway. This is async, remember?
Designed for focus, not noise. Twist doesn't barrage you with notifications, but rather funnels everything that requires your attention into an 'inbox' model, so you can manage your communication how you want. It also allows linking between threads, allowing you to more easily reference past conversations and decisions.
While Slack has conditioned many people to expect constant communication within their organization, it can have many drawbacks. It can be addicting (who doesn't love all the gifs?), distracting and disrupts deep-flow work. For an interesting deep-dive into Doist's thought process on the pitfalls of Slack & real-time communication, and what they hoped to achieve with Twist, check out their blog post at the time: Why We’re Betting Against Real-Time Team Messaging Apps Like Slack
Interested in dipping your toes into more async communication? Maybe Twist is the tool you've been waiting for.
What About Team Culture?
One question that often arises when thinking about async collaboration is: how do you maintain the culture? There are many great answers to this, and it’s something we’ll dive into deeper in another blog post. But one powerful answer is: find time to connect synchronously, and when you do make sure you’re really connecting.
One great example of this is to plan periodic off-sites where everyone from a team or the company meets in person. These could be quarterly, bi-annual, or annual depending on the size of your team and other constraints (like travel budget). Depending on how much time you have you could use the time just for leisure and team bonding, or you could also incorporate sessions focused on deep collaboration. Setting the goals and strategy for the year may be something that really benefits from in-person collaboration for example. That being said, if you have limited time make sure to emphasize activities that will bring people together in powerful ways. Don’t just have everyone do their standard work together; you want to have events that deepen the ties amongst your team so that for the rest of the quarter/year when they are just working virtually (and maybe asynchronously) they benefit from those human-to-human connections they’ve built.
Another great example, if you can’t afford to fly everyone out to one location, is to host a memorable and interactive virtual event. White Elephant, the popular holiday gift-swap game, is one of the most impactful events we’ve seen. Time and again, the feedback we get from companies big and small is: “We had a blast. Your website doesn’t begin to show how fun this is.” Check out why White Elephant makes for a great remote holiday party option, or sign up free today to get started!