The Async Weekly Review: A Format for Distributed Teams

This is the operating principle that makes distributed teams work. It's also the key to running effective weekly reviews when your team is spread across time zones.

The mistake most companies make is treating async and sync as interchangeable. They're not. They serve fundamentally different cognitive functions.

The real question to answer

This is not primarily a tooling or culture debate. The core question is: what kinds of work require shared presence, and what kinds do not?

Once that is clear, the async vs sync structure becomes obvious.

What async is for

Async is best suited for:

• Status updates
• Factual context
• Metrics and dashboards
• Written proposals
• Individual sensemaking

Async optimizes for:

• Depth of thought
• Clarity of expression
• Fairness of voice
• Time-zone independence

Where async breaks down: Async alone struggles when ambiguity is high, tradeoffs are real, incentives are misaligned, or judgment is required. Async-only leadership turns decision-making into parallel monologues.

What sync is for

Synchronous time is best used for:

• Decision-making under uncertainty
• Resolving disagreements
• Prioritization and tradeoffs
• Strategy formation
• Building shared intuition and trust

Sync optimizes for:

• Speed of convergence
• Nuance
• Emotional bandwidth
• Mutual support among leaders

Where sync breaks down: Sync fails when it is used for read-outs, unprepared discussion, performative status reporting, or thinking out loud without structure. Sync without prep is theater.

The right operating model

The strongest model is async-first input, sync-only synthesis.

The sequence that matters:

1. Async is mandatory for preparation
2. Sync is reserved for synthesis, debate, and decisions

This is not an "equal blend." It is intentional sequencing.

The async weekly review format

Here's how to structure a weekly review for distributed teams:

24-48 hours before meeting: Async updates

Every team lead submits:

• Status for each OKR (on track / at risk / off track)
• Confidence score (0-10)
• Key blockers or dependencies
• Any items that need sync discussion

Format: Keep updates structured and scannable. Three sentences max per item. Use a shared template.

Time required: 10-15 minutes per person.

Deadline: Firm. No async update = no right to extended airtime in sync.

Before meeting: Facilitator prep

The facilitator reviews all async updates and creates a sync agenda:

• What's off-track?
• What decisions need to be made?
• What disagreements need resolution?

Items that don't need discussion get acknowledged, not reviewed.

The sync meeting: 30 minutes max

Structure:

• 0-5 min: Quick pulse (major news, urgent issues)
• 5-25 min: Exception review (off-track items, decisions)
• 25-30 min: Recap decisions and actions

Rules:

• No status recaps (everyone read async updates)
• Propose solutions, not open questions
• 3 minutes per item max
• Park tangents for separate conversations

After meeting: Async follow-up

• Decisions and actions posted to shared channel
• Parked items assigned to separate discussions
• Any async-only updates acknowledged

Leader async preparation is non-negotiable

When leaders do not prepare asynchronously:

• Meetings drift into status
• Loud voices dominate
• Thinking happens live and poorly
• Remote and introverted participants lose

Async prep:

• Levels the playing field
• Raises the baseline of thinking
• Allows sync time to operate at a higher altitude

What good sync time should feel like

A strong leadership meeting feels like:

• Shared reasoning
• Pressure-testing assumptions
• Aligning on tradeoffs
• Supporting each other through uncertainty

It should not feel like:

• Going around the room
• Reading documents aloud
• Rehashing what was already written

If the meeting could have been an email, leadership failed upstream.

How company context affects the mix

Context influences the ratio, but not the principle:

• Remote or async-first companies require stronger async prep and tighter sync agendas
• Co-located or sync-heavy companies need guardrails to protect thinking time
• Early-stage companies skew more sync due to high ambiguity
• Later-stage companies skew more async to preserve scale and focus

Across all contexts, the invariant remains: async for input, sync for judgment.

A failure mode to actively avoid

The most dangerous pattern:

• Async exists but is ignored
• Meetings re-litigate everything
• Preparation becomes optional
• Decisions rely on charisma and speed

This leads to shallow decisions, uneven participation, exhaustion, and false alignment. The operating system degrades quietly.

A clean stance to anchor on

• Async and sync serve different cognitive functions
• Async is for clarity, context, and independent thinking
• Sync is for synthesis, strategy, and mutual support
• Leaders must prepare async
• Meetings must earn their existence by producing judgment or decisions

Put this into practice

For a practical template to run efficient weekly reviews, see our 30-Minute Leadership Review Template. For tips on streamlining your pre-meeting prep, check out How to Prepare for Weekly Reviews in 5 Minutes.