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> We use Slack for internal comms, but it's used mostly for chit-chat conversations and real-time issues. Is there a product for slow-thinking updates where I c

> We use Slack for internal comms, but it's used mostly for chit-chat conversations and real-time issues. Is there a product for slow-thinking updates where I can share teams news and align my +40 people team? With distributed teams, I don't think communicating big vision ideas are all that difficult. They can usually be solved with a monthly all-hands. The problem with distributed teams is the lack of informal interactions. When you come up with a seed of an idea, that may well be a bad idea or isn't thoroughly formulated, it's an immense help to walk over to someone's desk and run it by them. Slack and email are poor tools for this type of early innovation because they require you to write your idea down. At the very early stages of innovation, you may not even have a clear enough vision of the solution (or the problem it's trying to solve), to commit it to writing. Most of these early ideas are originally flawed or down-right incorrect, but low-risk informal chats with co-workers can help crystalize or disprove the idea far more efficiently than any written medium.

mac01021 7y ago
I'm not convinced that an idea (or a seed thereof) that is not formed well enough to be written down is ready for discussion with another person. An idea that has navigated through the internal dialogue I have to engage in to put it to paper is much less a waste of your time. And, if you want me to provide well thought-out feedback on your idea, don't ask me to respond to it in real time or in the timeframe of a meeting. The ideal process for ideation may be informal and low-risk, but it is also asynchronous and via the written word (possibly with pictures). Write down whatever you can about your problem or your idea and then send it to me, saying "what do you think?". I will read it at the time when I am most able to give it my full attention, cogitate for as long as I think necessary, and then reply with the best possible feedback. Maybe some cases benefit from the rapid iteration that can happen in an oral conversation. But in my experience, most or all of those work just about as well with a rubber duck.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > I'm not convinced that an idea (or a seed thereof) that is not formed well enough to be written down is ready for discussion with another person. ... Write down whatever you can about your problem ... then send it to me, saying "what do you think?". I will read it at the time when I am most able to give it my full attention ... Unfortunately, that delay imposes pretty serious transaction costs on innovation. Because most ideas are not worthwhile, it's often more productive to discard them quickly and move on to the next idea than to dwell on them for longer periods of time. Put analytically, assume there are 2 developers at a company each with plenty of ideas, but 9 out of 10 of them are garbage. Further assume that determining a bad idea is actually a bad idea with another person takes 0.5 hours, but doing it on your own takes 1.5 hours. The two devs will generate far more good ideas (those 1 out of 10), if they talk to each other than if they dwell on them without speaking to each other.

mac01021 7y ago

I'm not convinced that an idea (or a seed thereof) that is not formed well enough to be written down is ready for discussion with another person. An idea that has navigated through the internal dialogue I have to engage in to put it to paper is much less a waste of your time. And, if you want me to provide well thought-out feedback on your idea, don't ask me to respond to it in real time or in the timeframe of a meeting. The ideal process for ideation may be informal and low-risk, but it is also asynchronous and via the written word (possibly with pictures). Write down whatever you can about your problem or your idea and then send it to me, saying "what do you think?". I will read it at the time when I am most able to give it my full attention, cogitate for as long as I think necessary, and then reply with the best possible feedback. Maybe some cases benefit from the rapid iteration that can happen in an oral conversation. But in my experience, most or all of those work just about as well with a rubber duck.

speedplane 7y ago
> I'm not convinced that an idea (or a seed thereof) that is not formed well enough to be written down is ready for discussion with another person. ... Write down whatever you can about your problem ... then send it to me, saying "what do you think?". I will read it at the time when I am most able to give it my full attention ... Unfortunately, that delay imposes pretty serious transaction costs on innovation. Because most ideas are not worthwhile, it's often more productive to discard them quickly and move on to the next idea than to dwell on them for longer periods of time. Put analytically, assume there are 2 developers at a company each with plenty of ideas, but 9 out of 10 of them are garbage. Further assume that determining a bad idea is actually a bad idea with another person takes 0.5 hours, but doing it on your own takes 1.5 hours. The two devs will generate far more good ideas (those 1 out of 10), if they talk to each other than if they dwell on them without speaking to each other.