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How Alan cuts 90% of meetings with async decision-making

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Last updated: June 18, 2025

🔍 TL;DR

Alan is a French health insurance unicorn popular for its remote-first culture. In this blog post, we decrypt how they set up async decision making to avoid 90% of internal meetings.
What’s striking about Alan is how deliberate they were in making decision-making async by design:

  • Structured async workflows

  • GitHub Issues for decisions

  • Clear written templates for context setting on each decision

  • Lightweight decision making frameworks (LOCI roles) to help escalate decision making

In summary, this guide breaks down their system so your team can apply it.

❓ Why most meetings waste time

Meetings suck up focus. They reward the loudest voices, drain time across time zones, leave no trace, and rarely drive decisions. After multiple iterations trying to improve meeting efficiency (clear agendas, limiting meetings to 15 min, etc,), Alan came to those same conclusions. They replaced talking with writing, a process detailed below.


👉 Join the waitlist

Alan’s async decision-making system (Step-by-Step):
Step 1: Create a decision forum

  • Use GitHub, Notion, Coda, or Linear

  • One repo per team

  • One issue = one decision

  • Label by type, urgency, status


Step 2: Use a standard format

Each async decision starts with:

  • Title: What are we deciding?

  • Context: Why it matters

  • Proposal: Suggested action

  • Timeline: By when the decision must be made

  • LOCI Roles: Who leads, owns, contributes, and is informed

Alan LOCI decision-making framework:

Alan Issue example on Github:

Step 3: Collaborate & close

  • Team comments = feedback loop

  • Updates logged transparently

  • Owner closes issue when resolved

In summary, this structure makes decisions repeatable, searchable, and scalable.

✨ Why this works
- Boosts deep work by reducing context switching → Slack is used in last resort for urgent (or non important) communication.
- Aligns teams without real-time sync
- Clarifies thinking and empowers quieter voices
- Leaves a searchable decision trail

No more: “Didn’t we already discuss this?”
In summary: async decisions build clarity, calm, and better outcomes.

⚖️ Tools to implement your async workflow:


Use what you already have:

  • Docs: GitHub, Notion, Linear, or Coda

  • Chat: Usually Slack (or Upstream for more async comms 🐟 if you’re lucky to be enrolled in our private beta 😉)

  • Logs: GitHub Issues or Notion tables

Start with one team. One rule: write it down.


Original Insight: Alan's 1,000 issue archive.

Alan has logged 1,000+ async decisions so far, and counting. Newcomers can retrace past decisions nearly up to company inception and benefit from added context when making new decisions.


📦 Bonus: Add this to your toolkit

Want to try these practices?

✅ Make good use of Front’s Open Source Internal Communication Guidelines

✅ Improve your writing skills with AI-powered DevSecOps startup Gitlab’s tips for better writing

✅ Make better decisions following Alan’s Github issue template: How to make decisions in an asynchronous work environment: Our method at Alan

✅ Want our 10 async comm templates? Download our 10 Ultimate Async Comm templates here. You will also find a template for Alan's Github issues :)

✨ Why this works
- Boosts deep work by reducing context switching → Slack is used in last resort for urgent (or non important) communication.
- Aligns teams without real-time sync
- Clarifies thinking and empowers quieter voices
- Leaves a searchable decision trail

No more: “Didn’t we already discuss this?”
In summary: async decisions build clarity, calm, and better outcomes.

⚖️ Tools to implement your async workflow:


Use what you already have:

  • Docs: GitHub, Notion, Linear, or Coda

  • Chat: Usually Slack (or Upstream for more async comms 🐟 if you’re lucky to be enrolled in our private beta 😉)

  • Logs: GitHub Issues or Notion tables

Start with one team. One rule: write it down.


Original Insight: Alan's 1,000 issue archive.

Alan has logged 1,000+ async decisions so far, and counting. Newcomers can retrace past decisions nearly up to company inception and benefit from added context when making new decisions.


📦 Bonus: Add this to your toolkit

Want to try these practices?

✅ Make good use of Front’s Open Source Internal Communication Guidelines

✅ Improve your writing skills with AI-powered DevSecOps startup Gitlab’s tips for better writing

✅ Make better decisions following Alan’s Github issue template: How to make decisions in an asynchronous work environment: Our method at Alan

✅ Want our 10 async comm templates? Download our 10 Ultimate Async Comm templates here. You will also find a template for Alan's Github issues :)

✨ Why this works
- Boosts deep work by reducing context switching → Slack is used in last resort for urgent (or non important) communication.
- Aligns teams without real-time sync
- Clarifies thinking and empowers quieter voices
- Leaves a searchable decision trail

No more: “Didn’t we already discuss this?”
In summary: async decisions build clarity, calm, and better outcomes.

⚖️ Tools to implement your async workflow:


Use what you already have:

  • Docs: GitHub, Notion, Linear, or Coda

  • Chat: Usually Slack (or Upstream for more async comms 🐟 if you’re lucky to be enrolled in our private beta 😉)

  • Logs: GitHub Issues or Notion tables

Start with one team. One rule: write it down.


Original Insight: Alan's 1,000 issue archive.

Alan has logged 1,000+ async decisions so far, and counting. Newcomers can retrace past decisions nearly up to company inception and benefit from added context when making new decisions.


📦 Bonus: Add this to your toolkit

Want to try these practices?

✅ Make good use of Front’s Open Source Internal Communication Guidelines

✅ Improve your writing skills with AI-powered DevSecOps startup Gitlab’s tips for better writing

✅ Make better decisions following Alan’s Github issue template: How to make decisions in an asynchronous work environment: Our method at Alan

✅ Want our 10 async comm templates? Download our 10 Ultimate Async Comm templates here. You will also find a template for Alan's Github issues :)

📢 Want to support us?

👉 Sign up for our waitlist and be the first to try Upstream.

🧠 FAQ

Q: How do I reduce meetings in a remote team?

A: Use async workflows to replace meetings. Document decisions with clear formats. Write before you talk.

Q: What is async decision-making?

A: It’s a written, non-real-time process for proposing, debating, and closing decisions without meetings.

Q: What tools do I need for async collaboration?

A: Use GitHub or Notion for logs, and Slack/Threads for discussions. Templates ensure clarity and consistency.