The meeting protects the loudest person in the room.
[ trace // field response ]
Synchronous communication is not just a preference. It is a power structure. The meeting protects the people who think fastest in real time, speak the loudest, and forget what was said the moment the call ends.
Async-first writing redistributes power. The slow thinker, the non-native speaker, the introvert, the person three time zones away — each of them gets the same shot at the document that the loudest extrovert in the room gets.
Adopt async on purpose. The team you end up with is a different team than the meeting-first version would have produced.
