1 Maybe controversial take below: knowing what I know now, if I were starting my company today, I would bet less on Slack for our main mechanism of internal communication and more on email. Thread >>
2 Let’s start with what I love about Slack, and there is a lot. I love that it reasonably democratizes the spread of internal information, that it is easy to share with a whole bunch of people at once.
3 We pipe every new sales deal and renewal through a company-wide Slack channel when it closes, so the whole team can see and celebrate. We have channels where we share customer achievements, competitive info, + logistics about the office. Everyone can see what's going on.
4 Every team has an open channel where other teams can ask them questions and engage with them. Teams publish important company-wide work on those channels. Writing to an all-company email DL would feel heavy, but sharing in Slack feels light and accessible.
5 Similarly, I love that it is easy to stay informed about work streams that I am not leading or actively participating in, because I can lurk on channels and use that context to inform work that I am more directly involved with. These are great things.
6 However, as we have grown, reliance on Slack has caused operational problems. There are too many channels, too much information for everyone to be constantly tracking. One of our Textio Principles is “lead with curiosity.” Slack makes it easy to do this, but also easy to drown.
7 With so many channels, it’s not always clear to people what they should pay attention to. No one can get their own work done if they’re monitoring Slack for “context” all day.
8 Furthermore, when a senior leader chimes in on Slack to give an opinion about something, it may not be clear to the real problem owner what they are accountable for. Leading? Following? Responding? The stakes can feel too high. The rightful owner can be disempowered.
9 Speaking only for myself, Slack as a medium accommodates my greatest strength and weakness: I am a very fast creator and consumer of words. I can read everything and interfere with things when I don’t mean to, and before I’m aware that I’ve done so.
10 This can give me deep knowledge of an area before it is appropriate for me to have deep knowledge of it (if it ever even is). That makes it harder for people to let the inherent messiness of invention play out. Some work is not ready for input, but I can still give it.
11 Every few weeks, I have to diligently unsubscribe from a bunch of channels so I don’t inadvertently mess with work in progress before it’s ready. That can feel frustrating, like I put myself in a position of getting a diminished signal. But the truth is it works better.
12 Then there’s the “every post is a megaphone” phenomenon. Not every post is ready to be a megaphone. When one well-intentioned person (IC, manager, or executive) posts “I heard a rumor that X; is X true?”
13 Even if X isn’t true, the team now has to deal with the broad perception that X is true, just because someone posted that a it is. That noise takes time and energy that would be better spent elsewhere.
This is tough when an IC does it, and crushing when an executive does.
This is tough when an IC does it, and crushing when an executive does.
14 In an email-first culture, people use fewer megaphones because it feels more intrusive to do so. It IS more intrusive to do so. When I write an email that you are on, you specifically get a notification. Not so in Slack! So people use the megaphone more.
15 Because everything is a megaphone, you also end up with the question of who gets a voice. As with any public square, some people are louder, more entitled and confident voices. What about the people who aren't? How are they heard?
16 If you're a confident voice, it can feel like the public square is open to everyone equally. But having equal access to the text box does not mean that people feel equal access to use it.
Slack can amplify the loudest voices + make it even harder for quieter ones to show up.
Slack can amplify the loudest voices + make it even harder for quieter ones to show up.
17 Email is not perfect either, and there is a lot we gain in using Slack. @jensenharris + I have spent a lot of time talking about what an experience would look like that combined these modes into something more manageable. We’re not there today.
