Almanac Thinks Better Collaboration, Not AI, Can Help Professionals Save Time At Work

Companies are seeking innovative ways to improve collaboration and productivity as remote and hybrid work become more common.

Google Workspace has invested in generative AI tools to reduce user workload, but Almanac, a platform for structured collaboration, believes that getting humans to work better together can increase productivity.

Following a closed beta that included over 1,000 organizations, including Indeed and Cisco, the company is now releasing early access to its platform. Additionally, it provides insight into how businesses can improve collaboration through “The Modern Work Method,” based on interviews with over 5,000 business leaders.

Almanac’s CEO and founder, Adam Nathan, told me in a Zoom interview that his company didn’t start during the pandemic, despite distributed work becoming the “new normal” during that period. Nathan, who has a background in systems engineering and has worked as a product manager for Apple and Lyft, recognized the need for a more efficient way to collaborate after spending much of his time in meetings and struggling to find notes or answers to basic questions.

Nathan cited a recent study that found people spend 95% of their workweek looking for files, sitting in meetings, or responding to messages.

He drew inspiration from GitHub, a platform for collaborating on code, and sought to apply the same principles to knowledge work and business use cases. Nathan said before GitHub, engineers at his companies were relegated to a back office function. Now, engineering is seen as the center of innovation and progress.

“I had this contrast with the engineers I worked with who used a tool called GitHub to collaborate on code,” he said. “I could tell just from a close distance that the engineers I worked with were way more productive than I was and were seemingly happier.

The platform offers a range of features that enable teams to write, approve, and organize documents efficiently. Almanac’s unique “Layers” function allows multiple users to edit documents simultaneously without confusion, while automated “Review Requests” help expedite the review process. Users can also track the progress of any project with ease.

In a scenario where three screenwriters are working on a script together, Almanac’s structured approach to collaboration would allow them to create a workflow for drafting, editing, and approving the script, with automations attached to each step. This would streamline the process and reduce the need for back-and-forth communication, which Nathan says is more efficient than using a tool like Google Docs.

On Thursday, Almanac released “The Modern Work Method,” a small guidebook on how companies should approach modern work. The philosophy was derived from over 5,000 interviews with top business professionals. The Modern Work Method emphasizes structured, transparent, and async-first collaboration, as opposed to informal, real-time, office-first approaches. It consists of several principles, including defining success clearly, maintaining a structured approach, sharing ideas early and often, using documents over meetings, and creating a culture of learning.

“Everybody knows like what great collaboration feels like, that magical sense of, ‘Wow, we did something today that I didn’t even imagine was possible this morning. I think in the end, it’s about humans coming together,” Nathan said.