Sync or Async: The Overlooked Decision That Costs Companies Billions

Organizations that ignore the cost of synchronous meetings waste not just billions of dollars but the insight and energy of people who could contribute if the timing were different, according to a new essay on workplace and media strategy.

The essay frames every activity — a phone call, a staff meeting, a Netflix stream — as either synchronized (together, on a shared schedule, in real time) or asynchronized (on your own schedule). Phone calls are sync. Texts are async. Network TV was sync; YouTube and Netflix are async. Writing a book is async; publishing it is sync; reading it is async again. Commercial air travel is sync; a private jet is async.

"Organizations that don't account for the cost of sync-meetings waste not just billions of dollars but the insight and energy of the people who might be able to contribute if the timing and approach were different," the author writes.

What makes sync work?

The essay lists three advantages of synchronous work:

• Energy multiplies. When someone contributes, others seek to catch up; a good idea pushes others to top it.
• It can be more efficient. The donut shop cannot frost whenever convenient — the frosting person must act right after donuts leave the fryer. Contributors also see, in real time, how recipients respond.
• It offers command, control and one kind of inspection.

The costs are equally concrete:

• Energy also spirals down when a team member is emotionally disconnected or physically absent.
• It can be less efficient — there is a lot of sitting around on a movie set, and slack comes at a premium.
• It rarely matches the needs of the worker or the market.
• It makes it hard to be intentional and clear about project details and arcs.

Why did Netflix and Amazon win?

The author's sharpest historical claim: the only reason Amazon and Netflix exist is that their sync-era predecessors — broadcast and retail incumbents — could not figure out an async relationship with the customer.

Yet incumbency on either side breeds timidity. Netflix, the author argues, now hesitates to shift some content to a sync model that would create more buzz. Amazon has failed to capture the real-time shopping experience common online in China. When media consumption flips from one mode to the other, companies in love with whatever built their organization flounder.

The pandemic offers another case. When workers were forced home roughly six years ago, some embraced async productivity; many bosses, the author writes, could not manage people they could not see, because employees had been indoctrinated that work was what you did when someone was watching.

Who owns the clock?

Sync is a display of power, the essay argues: the person who calls the meeting has already decided to spend everyone else's time. Bosses call meetings; employees send memos. Async moves power from the coordinator to the creator.

Other observations include:

• Handoffs carry the leverage and friction. A deadline is a sync point imposed on async work.
• Flips are opportunities. Kickstarter turned product launches async; Ted Turner made news break in real time.
• Fake async creeps in. Slack, texts and email succeeded as async tools but now carry sync expectations — interruptions without the multiplied energy.
• Cultural side effects are real. Netflix's binge-viewing moat, built on capital advantage, diminished word of mouth. Far more people talked about Nathan Fielder's movie during launch week, the author notes, than ever talked about his streaming show.
• AI is currently async. An agent never needs a meeting and works at 3 a.m., making humans the sync bottleneck — but as its power grows, expect AI to partner in most sync events.
• Trust is built in sync and spent in async. New teams and new customers may need sync first; reputation systems and online communities are getting better at letting newcomers earn trust asynchronously.

Pricing follows the distinction. "There's a reason it costs a million dollars to have Bob Dylan sing at your birthday party," the author writes.

Three axioms to act on

The essay closes with three rules: don't make something synchronized unless it delivers clear advantages over async — show your work and defend the choice; match async work to your internal chemistry, getting more done in a different order than assigned; and watch the shifts between modes, because that is where opportunities and pitfalls lie.

For marketers, the immediate so-what is to audit which meetings, launches and media formats genuinely need real time — and to price, schedule and defend the rest as async.