Remote communication needs three layers. Each serves a different purpose.
Real-time for emergencies. Production issues. Genuine blockers. Response in minutes.
Async coordination for daily work. Status updates. Questions. Decisions. Response in hours.
Persistent knowledge for permanence. Documentation. Decisions. Context. Response never required. It’s reference material.
Most teams muddle these together. Everything goes in Slack. Urgent and trivial compete for attention. Important decisions vanish into scroll.
Separate the layers. Different channels. Different expectations. Different cadences.
When information flows through the right layer, people know how to respond. Signal rises above noise.