How async communication makes remote teams faster and more focused

The Cushion team has worked remotely for over a decade, and for most of that time, Slack was the centre of our work. It was always open. It was work, our virtual office.

But over the years, we noticed lots of problems and inefficiencies with how the interface worked, especially around the default to instant messaging.

• Everyone used Slack differently. Some used threads diligently. Others didn’t really understand them, or didn’t know when to use them. Important conversations would vanish under GIFs and off-topic noise.
• Catching up after time away was a nightmare. A @channel ping about “lunch ideas” would have more visibility than a thoughtful update on a project launch, or a critical product decision.

To get around these inefficiencies, meetings started appearing in our calendars, taking us away from valuable focus time and leaving a huge number of important decisions undocumented and lost.

So we started looking for ways to combat this kind of noise. We were looking for a Slack alternative that would combat this. Ideas around “async communication” and “deep focus” started to appear in our searches.

What is async communication?

Async communication is a communication method which facilitates participants interacting with each other at different times. The most popular form of this would be something like email. We believe that there’s a balance to be found between Slack’s real-time communication methods and team features, and email’s thoughtfulness, clarity, and focused nature.

How can it speed up my team?

At first it sounds counterintuitive, but async actually speeds up teams by reducing context-switching and decision fatigue. Teams move faster because they’re not stuck in meetings or playing catch-up in noisy chats. Everything important is documented and readily available for team members and contractors who need to catch up. Without constant distractions, you can focus deeply while writing posts or drafting replies, responding thoughtfully on your own schedule.

We built Cushion so that best async work practices could easily be part of your day-to-day

We started with async communication as the foundation. Every feature in Cushion is designed to help your team stay focused, reduce noise, and make clear progress, without needing to invent a new system or enforce a rulebook.

Some of the features that make this possible

1. Posts: Keep everything threaded by default. It’s hard to underestimate just how useful this is until you actually try it. It keeps every single discussion on-topic, and it also makes your work much more organized and linkable so conversations have context and don’t get buried. They speed you up because you no longer have to sift through mountains of chat that isn’t relevant to you.

   

2. Resolutions: Tracking decision making helps close out decisions which lead to progress. Misalignment kills team productivity and slows people down. Often the hardest thing is not what decision to make but how to make a decision at all.

   

3. Notifications inbox: Keeps you focused on the conversations that matter most: conversations you’re directly involved in, places where you’ve been mentioned, or where your feedback has been requested. The inbox gives you confidence that you’re not blocking anyone and delivers a satisfying sense of being “caught up” that is lacking in most chat-first collaboration tools.

   

4. Checkins: Allow everyone to understand what work was actually completed, separating what we want to do from what we actually did. Accountability keeps everyone honest and helps teams understand how they are really progressing. You can’t hide behind vague updates or poor OKR targets.

   

We built Cushion because we believe remote teams deserve better than chat chaos. They need a focused place to work together. We work so much more quickly now that we finally have a tool that allows us to catch up on what’s missed quickly, and discuss work with purpose. We can’t go back and we think everyone should try it!