I've found a set of cultural rules for Slack that tends to work well for keeping Slack a high quality communication tool. 1. If it can be an email, put it in a

I've found a set of cultural rules for Slack that tends to work well for keeping Slack a high quality communication tool. 1. If it can be an email, put it in an email instead. Email has far better tooling than Slack for automatically filtering and triaging messages so that the recipient can focus on the important ones. 2. The busyness of a channel should be inversely proportional to the number of participants. Channels with >10 participants should be virtual ghost towns. 2a. Except when you are using the channel for crisis management. 2b. Except for channels where people are asking "how to" questions, for those, either have the current on-call people triage it and call in the experts as needed, or set the expectation that people will get answers eventually. 3. If you need a response in under an hour, do a voice call or find them in person. 4. Employees should not be expected to have Slack on their phones, and employees should not be expected to respond outside of work hours. Edit: also rule #5: Social channels: they are neither forbidden nor discouraged, but for the sake of your own focus, you should keep them muted.