Slack is awesome, and it's growing at an incredible rate. Their timing has been perfect! Instant Messaging (IM) in the workplace is really gaining momentum now, possibly because this year - 2015 - is the year where there is an equal number of Gen X and Gen Y employees in the workforce. Up till now, the Gen X'ers were the majority, and now that's changed, the millennials with their emojis, snapchats and SMS will be the majority!
I think Slack and it's older cousin HipChat are great tools. Even email is a brilliant tool, if used well. But I've noticed over the last few years more and more people having conversations digitally that would be far far better held in person, or at least by phone or Skype. I've been using IM in the workplace for over 15 years, and I've learned what works and what doesn't.
When there's too many back-and-forths, or the context isn't clear, or you just need to have a discussion, pick up the phone! You'll be amazed how effective it is. It's like the difference between watching Avatar in black and white on a small tv screen, to watching it in full colour, 3D, at an IMAX cinema.
Electronic communications is great for functional stuff:
- "Hey, where are we on the delivery of project X?"
- "Where can I find the draft of the new blog post?"
- "Does our product support this use case?"
But if you sense that your not on the same page with a colleague, instead of send another 100 messages back and forth, get on a call. You'll quickly clear up and misunderstandings. If you're negotiating something delicate like a sale, purchase, or even a job offer, get on the phone. The human touch will avoid things getting too personal, or going off track with incorrect assumptions on both sides.
Not convinced? Job interviews still largely happen in person, or at least over video. Why? Because you're trying to get to know the person. You're trying to have a conversation. You wouldn't dream of doing an interview over IM, but so many tricky work related conversations happen on this medium, and it's killing productivity and satisfaction. People fuming over some perceived "attitude" in an electronic message, or two people talking for half an hour at cross-purposes, before they realise the confusion.
The founders of a new product called Speak get this. It's still an early product, but you can download it now in public beta. Tom Moor is one of the founders behind Speak and saw the need for better communication tools while working at Buffer. Buffer is a company known for it's globally dispersed team and being great at communication. Having experienced the challenges first hand, Tom left to start Sqwiggle, a collaboration tool for remote teams that includes video as a big component. After learning from that, and seeing how tools like Slack have exploded, they saw the need for something complementary to enable these quick, unscheduled, conversations. They describe their new product like this: Speak helps remote teams improve collaboration by providing instant, push-to-talk communication.
You don't need to use Speak to achieve this of course, but please, the next time you're getting frustrated with an IM discussion, or shaking your head at an email, pick up a phone. Have a call, and see if it helps. I think you'll be surprised.
