What It Is
Written-first culture uses writing as the starting point for important proposals and durable decision records. It can coexist with live discussion and informal chat.
Inference — synthesis of the company cases below. The useful distinction is when writing carries the context, not an absolute rule that thinking must happen only in text.
Why It Works
Writing makes reasoning inspectable. 37signals favors complete written thoughts for substantial decisions. Inference: making reasoning explicit can expose gaps before a decision; the source does not establish that written decisions are universally better. (Source)
Writing is independent of schedule. “Communication shouldn’t require schedule synchronization.” (Source) A written proposal can be read at 2am in Tokyo or 3pm in São Paulo. A meeting cannot.
Writing helps everyone, including people who were not there. This includes people who couldn’t attend, people who join the company later, and people who need to understand the context of a decision made two years ago. Verbal communication disappears; writing compounds. (Source)
Writing changes participation constraints. Inference: asynchronous discussion may give people more time to respond, while literacy, language and access can still create barriers. The cases do not establish that writing removes bias or guarantees equal influence.
GitLab gives written context an explicit role. Its communication guidance treats the handbook as a central operating reference. That is a stated model, not evidence that every decision is recorded or that the document is the entire company. (Source)
Where It Fails
Poor writers become organizational bottlenecks. In a written-first culture, people who cannot write clearly become coordination problems. Their proposals are misunderstood, their decisions are challenged, and their status updates generate follow-up questions. [Inference — practitioner observation across written-first companies; no published cross-company study quantifies the effect, but the corollary is visible in the explicit hire-for-writing requirements at Doist, Basecamp, and GitLab.]
Not all information belongs in writing. Sensitive personnel situations, crisis emotional support, and genuine real-time creative brainstorms have a legitimate claim on synchronous communication. Written-first companies that apply the norm too rigidly create unnecessary distance in the moments that require human warmth.
Written guidance needs maintenance. GitLab treats documentation as part of work. Inference: outdated guidance can mislead readers; the cited cases do not show how most companies maintain documents. (Source)
Performative writing replaces real communication. When writing is rewarded, people write more — including writing that signals activity rather than producing clarity. Long update posts that nobody reads, detailed plans that nobody follows, documentation that exists to demonstrate effort rather than transfer knowledge. [Inference — practitioner observation; not a measured pattern, but a known failure mode in document-heavy organizations.]
Best Examples
37signals / Basecamp — Its guide favors long-form writing for substantial decisions and reports that Basecamp holds 98% of internal communication. It says the company does not use internal email, while also acknowledging chat, occasional video calls and GitHub discussions. These are described practices and rules of thumb, not proof that every significant interaction is long-form or that email is formally banned. (Source)
GitLab — Its communication guidance presents the handbook as a single operating reference. Inference: public access lets readers inspect this account; it does not prove that every decision reaches the handbook or that external visibility causes writing quality. (Source)
Automattic — “Communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company.” Their Expectations document specifies: “Strive for clarity in your communication with high-level summaries.” P2 supports written project records alongside Linear, private chat rooms and Slack. (Current toolset) (Source)
Todoist (formerly Doist) — Written project communication coexists with a public handbook and recurring support meetings. Threaded writing is a coordination norm, not a technical impossibility of exchanging messages in real time. (Accountability, handbook)
Implementation Guide
Inference — application guidance from the cited cases, not validated universal requirements.
1. Start with decisions, not all communication. Do not try to make everything written. Start with: every significant decision must be written down with the reasoning. This creates momentum without overwhelming people.
2. Write the memo before the meeting. If you are going to have a meeting about something important, require a written document first. Everyone reads it before the meeting. The meeting discusses it, does not present it. Jeff Bezos’s “six-page narratively-structured memo” practice at Amazon is the most famous version of this; he describes it directly in his 2017 letter to shareholders. (Source: Amazon 2017 Letter to Shareholders, p. 4)
3. Pick one canonical place. “Everything in writing” breaks down when the writing is scattered across Notion, Confluence, Google Docs, Slack pins, and GitHub READMEs. Pick one place for decisions. Pick one place for processes. Maintain the distinction.
4. Write for the person who was not there. Every document, decision, or proposal should be comprehensible to someone reading it a year later with no context. Assume no shared knowledge. This discipline produces documents that are genuinely useful.
5. Reward writing quality explicitly. If you want a written-first culture, writing quality has to be a visible factor in performance evaluations and promotions. Otherwise, the incentive structure pulls people toward meeting performance, which is more visible in the moment.
6. Maintain your documents. Assign owners to living documents. Establish a cadence for reviewing key handbooks and policies. Outdated documents create confusion that is worse than no documents.
Common Mistakes
Inference — application guidance from the cited cases, not validated universal requirements.
Writing everything down without organizing it. An avalanche of documents is not a written-first culture. It is noise. Good written-first cultures have strong information architecture: predictable places for different kinds of content, consistent formats, clear ownership.
Confusing documentation with written-first culture. Documentation is writing after the fact. Written-first means the thinking happens in writing. Documentation is a product of written-first culture; it is not the culture itself.
Requiring long writing for short decisions. A small bug fix does not need a six-paragraph proposal. Written-first should be proportional to the significance of the decision. Over-applying the norm creates bureaucratic friction that makes people avoid writing at all.
Writing meeting notes instead of replacing meetings with writing. Taking good notes and circulating them after meetings is not written-first culture. It is better than nothing, but the meeting was still the primary mode. The shift is to write first and use meetings only when writing has been genuinely insufficient.
Related Frameworks
- Sync vs Async Decision Matrix — choose a communication mode for the work
- The 20–30 Person Fracture Point — a working hypothesis about coordination needs during growth
Sources
- The 37signals Guide to Internal Communication: https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate
- GitLab Communication Handbook: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/communication
- Expectations — Automattic: https://automattic.com/expectations/
- How Doist Works Remote: https://doist.com/how-we-work/how-doist-works-remote
- Amazon 2017 Letter to Shareholders (primary source for Bezos’s six-page narratively-structured memo practice): https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2017-letter-to-shareholders
Todoist accountability (September 2022): https://async.twist.com/accountability-remote-workers/
Todoist public handbook: https://www.todoist.com/handbook
Automattic current toolset: https://automattic.com/how-we-work/
Inferences
- Changing communication habits may require explicit norms and leadership support. These cases do not establish a 50-person threshold or show that a crisis is necessary.
- Writing can preserve context across locations. The selected public operating accounts are not a representative sample demonstrating the strength of a correlation between remote work and written-first culture.
Work with Alex
If your leadership team is the source of institutional knowledge that has never been written down — and you want to change that before it becomes a crisis — Alex helps companies build the written communication infrastructure that makes distributed execution durable.