Communicating

Sharing your company communication over Slack isn’t really that uncommon

In this remote working world — where many teams are spread out doing “home office”, we really need to communicate harder, better and smarter. I’m no communication expert, but in the same concept as the other chapters I’m sharing some of my findings of what’s good to do and not to do. Communication can be very helpful, and can go very wrong.

The thinking goes that in a traditional office environment (well, “:ish”) — there would be gatherings and announcements made, and people would receive the message and be able to ask questions back. That’s not really true.

Best case there is a “town hall” where you need to be a very strong person to dare to talk in front of everyone, if you’d manage to even get the microphone when you held up your arm. Also, I dare you to say anything negative in front of all your managers and salary payers. Didn’t think so. 

So what really happens is that people talk in small little groups. Back when people were smoking, some were talking in their little smoke group. People used Skype and nowadays Slack and Teams etc. They talk and chat and write and express themselves all the time.

Ever gone in to a room full of developers? (Back when people used to work in offices). Every single one would have earphones on and would rather be writing to each other than to break someones music listening flow by interrupting with something as weird as something spoken.

I once witnessed an entire 15-people dev team sit entirely still and clatter away on their keyboard, just to unison-ally stand up at exactly the same time. Why? A Slack message to go for lunch.

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