A proposal is discussed late in the afternoon in the founder’s time zone and approved before a specialist in another time zone starts her workday. When she reads the document, she spots a flawed assumption. She can leave a comment. Changing course, however, now requires reopening a decision. In this hypothetical situation, access to information came after the opportunity to influence the outcome.
It is a leadership issue that goes beyond finding a time for a meeting. Who receives the context first? Who can challenge an assumption while it is still being discussed? If the deadline follows only the founder’s schedule, availability may end up carrying more weight than expertise.
Peter Kazan, the founder of Atlantic Tech, is based in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and leads an international team of specialized independent contractors. In his reflections on leadership, Kazan advocates making room for others to contribute. That principle provides a way to examine who can participate in a decision and at what stage.
Where Time Zones Become Influence
Distance can make it harder to see who was left out of a conversation. A study by Longqi Yang and colleagues, published in 2021 in Nature Human Behaviour, analyzed communications among 61,182 Microsoft workers in the United States during the first six months of 2020. The researchers found a more static and siloed collaboration network after the shift to remote work.
According to Microsoft Research’s summary, the share of collaboration time devoted to connections between groups fell by approximately 25% relative to its pre-pandemic level. The 25% figure refers to how collaboration time was divided, not to a drop in productivity. The study also has limits: it covered a single company, during the unusual conditions of early 2020, and it did not look at whether employees in different time zones had equal influence.
Even so, the finding points to a problem worth watching. Conversations can stay within familiar groups, making it easier to miss input from other teams. Leaders should ask not only whether a discussion happened, but who was part of it and who was left out.
Asynchronous Leadership Starts Before the Meeting
A written discussion can make room for people working at a distance, provided it begins before the decision is made. The document needs to help someone understand the problem, assess the alternatives, and know what they can still contribute. An accessible folder alone does not provide those conditions.
GitLab’s communication handbook distinguishes a decision already made from an open proposal. For proposals, it advises explaining the problem, the options, and the type of input expected, as well as stating the deadline for comments and updating the status of the decision. That labeling matters because, on screen, an announcement and an invitation to weigh in can look nearly identical, yet only the invitation gives people a real chance to influence the outcome.
In its meeting guide, GitLab recommends sharing the agenda 72 hours in advance, with a minimum of 24 hours. When a meeting falls outside some participants’ working hours, it advises considering a 24- to 48-hour period for asynchronous input before confirming decisions and actions. These are the company’s recommendations, which need to be assessed in light of each team’s circumstances and the urgency involved.
Before concluding a consultation, three questions help assess whether there was a real opportunity to participate:
- Did the people whose expertise could change the assessment receive the same context?
- Did the deadline allow a reasonable opportunity to respond during their working hours?
- Was it clear what could still change and who would make the decision?
Fair Hearing Does Not Require Unanimity
Considering relevant input does not require a team to keep discussing until everyone agrees. Someone can have their objection considered and still disagree with the choice. What matters is that their information arrived in time to be evaluated.
In GitLab’s Directly Responsible Individuals model, one person has final authority and is expected to consult the relevant teams and stakeholders and gather context before deciding. Accountability remains clear, even when several people contribute to the analysis.
Peter Kazan on Making Room for the People Closest to a Problem
Peter Kazan’s leadership philosophy brings the discussion back to who gets heard. Across time zones, making room for someone to contribute means giving them a chance to share what they know before the decision is final. A team member may see a constraint the founder has missed. Working in another time zone does not make that information less valuable.
Kazan describes leadership through small, observable choices like making room for people close to a problem to help solve it. The principle aligns with a servant leadership philosophy, in which developing others is part of the responsibility of leading.
Returning to the opening example, the specialist’s observation could reveal an overlooked dependency and justify a change in the deadline. It could also be examined without changing the conclusion. In either case, that would be meaningfully different from discovering the problem after the choice had already been announced as final.
When a Live Conversation Helps
Some impasses call for a live conversation. GitLab’s communication handbook itself recognizes this option for genuine disagreements and situations where the context is still difficult to explain in writing. This keeps a preference for asynchronous communication from becoming a rule that prevents clarification.
A meeting can focus the discussion on the point in dispute. Afterward, recording the conclusion and the reasons behind it allows those who were absent to understand the reasoning. If the decision is open to review, stating how long new evidence will be considered preserves an opportunity to participate. Urgent issues call for a different pace, but the urgency needs to be explicit.
The Question Before Finalizing a Decision
The most useful test comes before the announcement. Was there an opportunity to include the necessary expertise? Did objections arrive while they could still be examined? Did people in another time zone know the discussion was taking place?
Leading a global team includes taking responsibility for these conditions. The quality of the choice depends on the information considered and the contributions that arrived in time to influence the analysis. The principle Kazan values, making room for others to contribute, has a practical application here. The most convenient time for the founder may be precisely the one that leaves someone else out of the decision.
