📝 Workbook · Business · Unit 9

Workbook · 9A — Distributed teams

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Exercise 1

Exercise 1 — Async-team vocabulary

Complete each sentence with ONE phrase from the box.

Word bank — drag or tap, then tap a gap
  1. Our  drop  is 14:00–17:00 UTC — the only three hours the whole team is awake at once.
  2. Every meaningful call is captured in the  drop  with a named owner and date.
  3. Berlin does a written  drop  to Bangalore at 18:00 each day — a one-paragraph 'here's what we did'.
  4. Wednesday is a company-wide  drop  — safeguarded for deep, uninterrupted work.
  5. We're  drop : writing is the default, and meetings are the exception we have to justify.
  6. Nobody can recall what was decided last quarter. A textbook case of  drop .
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Exercise 2

Exercise 2 — Clauses of contrast

Rewrite each pair of ideas as ONE sentence, using the linker in brackets.

  1. The team is in five time zones. We ship weekly. (ALTHOUGH)
  2. The eight-hour gap. We agreed by Friday. (DESPITE + noun)
  3. The docs are excellent. The decision log has been neglected for months. (HOWEVER)
  4. Berlin runs async-first. Austin still defaults to standups. (WHEREAS)
  5. We work across time zones. We hit every release date. (DESPITE + -ing)
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Exercise 3

Exercise 3 — Clauses of purpose

Complete each sentence with the most natural PURPOSE linker (to / in order to / so that / in case / for).

  1. We record every town hall ___ give async teammates equal access.
  2. Every decision is logged ___ future hires can trace how we got here.
  3. Wednesday is a no-meeting day ___ protect deep work.
  4. We keep an on-call rotation ___ something breaks overnight in Asia.
  5. This channel is ___ incident reports only.
  6. The doc has a decision needed section ___ nobody wastes 48 hours guessing what we're asking.
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Exercise 4

Exercise 4 — Async-first or meeting-heavy?

Decide whether each team habit is ASYNC-FIRST (writing beats meeting) or MEETING-HEAVY (meetings ARE the work).

  1. 'Every proposal is written as a one-pager; a meeting only happens if the doc leaves an open question.'

  2. 'Daily 09:00 standup for everyone — even the two engineers who are asleep at 09:00 GMT.'

  3. 'Every decision gets a one-paragraph write-up in a shared thread within 24h, tagged with owner and date.'

  4. 'If something isn't in a meeting, it doesn't happen. Docs are for after the fact.'

  5. 'Weekly "async town hall" — a 5-minute Loom + a written thread; comments allowed over 48h.'

  6. 'Unstructured Thursday sync — everyone joins, no agenda, "just to chat".'

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Exercise 5

Exercise 5 — Rewrite meeting-heavy as async-first

Rewrite each meeting-heavy line as an async-first line using a PURPOSE clause.

  1. 'Let's jump on a quick sync to align on the proposal.'
  2. 'We should have a daily standup at 09:00 for everyone.'
  3. 'Nobody remembers what we decided in the Q2 planning meeting.'
  4. 'Ravi keeps interrupting deep work with "quick questions".'
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Exercise 6

Exercise 6 — Three team leads describe their weekly rhythm

You'll hear three leads pitch their weekly operating rhythm. Decide who should own the company-wide async standard.

🎙️ Three team leads describe their weekly operating rhythm — multi-voice

  1. Which lead's rhythm is adopted, and why?
  2. Which lead runs meeting-heavy work dressed as remote?
  3. Which lead has good instincts but no structure?
Show transcript

Hana (Marco):Monday 09:00 CET all-hands, 90 minutes. Daily 09:00 standup Tuesday to Friday. Thursday afternoon unstructured sync. Decisions live in Slack. Bangalore joins at 12:30, San Francisco we're 'working on'. Velocity is high.

Caio (Priya):Our overlap window is 14:00–17:00 UTC — the only three hours all five sites are awake. Sync meetings are scheduled ONLY inside that window, so that Sydney doesn't dial in at 03:00. Wednesdays are a no-meeting day, in order to protect deep work. Every meaningful decision is captured in the log with owner and date — so that future hires can trace how we got here. We keep on-call in case something breaks overnight in Asia. That's the rhythm. It fits on one page.

Katya (Kwame):Yeah, we're pretty async, I think. We use Notion a lot, and we try not to meet on Wednesdays — usually. Standup thread most days, kind of. Decisions… we sort of remember them. When it doesn't work, we jump on a call. I think we're OK.

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Exercise 7

Exercise 7 — Write your team's operating rhythm

Write your OWN team's weekly operating rhythm as a ONE-page 'How this team works' doc (max 120 words). Cover: OVERLAP WINDOW (in UTC), ASYNC DEFAULTS, PROTECTED TIME, DECISION LOG. Every ritual must be followed by a PURPOSE clause ('so that…', 'in order to…', 'in case…'). Add ONE CONTRAST clause naming the trade-off.

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