3 ms·

There's a bit of a challenge today with chat, though. I work 4 timezones away from most of my team and we all prefer to swap e-mails, but chat seems to have str

by rcarmo 3y ago

There's a bit of a challenge today with chat, though. I work 4 timezones away from most of my team and we all prefer to swap e-mails, but chat seems to have stripped away some folks' ability to methodically go through topics, explain options and summarise next steps, leading to the usual "let's set up a call [to actually discuss everything in the e-mail thread]". Reading through old mailing-lists (and even older e-mails from the same company, but from seven years ago) shows a markedly different communication style - you could pretty much take the last two e-mails in a thread and paste them into a memo that would neatly encompass all of the scope. Not so today--there's a constant chattering of people who just can't prioritise or discuss more than a couple of topics in tow.

DharmaPolice 3y ago
Email is the victim of its own success. Because it had/has such dominance in the business world everyone had to live in their inbox, marketers appreciated that and lots of people grew to hate that. There have always been bad practices surrounding emails but I think it reached a point a long time ago where email itself was considered bad. Thus "email free Fridays" and internal comms plans which say email should be a last resort. People felt empowered to refuse to read many emails, especially if they were over 3-4 paragraphs. I too have colleagues who reflexively ask for a meeting in response to any email longer than a few lines, even though the issue is clearly communicated and obviously requires someone to read it and build a proper response. The ease with which we can all "jump on a call" has contributed to this. Yes, of course we've all seen email chains which go back and forth without progress but that's not a reason to assume every message will end up there.
- rcarmo 3y ago
  We could jump on calls well over seven years ago (I actually worked in ISDN video calling in the 1990s, and spent a decade or so working in a multinational telco, with plenty of conference calling involved). The loss of focus definitely accelerated with the rise of chat.
- abalashov 3y ago
  > I too have colleagues who reflexively ask for a meeting in response to any email longer than a few lines, even though the issue is clearly communicated and obviously requires someone to read it and build a proper response. Oh, yes. So much this. Except, I think it's fair to say it's managers and bosses who have this tendency, not so much colleagues.
- fuzztester 3y ago
  >The ease with which we can all "jump on a call" has contributed to this. I hate that term and concept "jump on a call". I often find that people don't prepare enough before the call, which defeats the purpose of the call.
- lol768 3y ago
  > I too have colleagues who reflexively ask for a meeting in response to any email longer than a few lines, even though the issue is clearly communicated and obviously requires someone to read it and build a proper response. I have spent many of these calls effectively just reading what I wrote in the email in the first place. Complete waste of my time.
quectophoton 3y ago
> leading to the usual "let's set up a call [to actually discuss everything in the e-mail thread]" You forgot the part where the call is scheduled for next week even though today is Wednesday. And any attempt to discuss further in text is met with "let's leave that for the call".
- fuzztester 3y ago
  Solid point.
- cookie_monsta 3y ago
  If you want to do this really well, title the meeting something generic like "catch up", don't attach an agenda or any kind of description and invite a bunch of people who weren't in the original discussion.
fuzztester 3y ago
Smaller attention spans, information overload, and consequent lack of attention to detail, are some of the reasons, IMO. And the first two of those are largely due to the uncontrolled effects of the Internet, i.e. the web and social media, on people, of course. Edit: wording
isykt 3y ago
Additionally, they refuse to answer the question that’s put to them. I am very careful with my words. I say exactly what I mean in as few words as necessary, but I find myself copying and pasting the same sentences into the chat box because the person or people reading seem to want to answer a completely different question.
- silverlake 3y ago
  Yes, this is the worst. I assume some people glance at the question and answer their misunderstanding.
jacobgorm 3y ago
I too long for the days of mailing lists and neatly structured email threads where you could reply to each point in order using >> markers for context and so on. In my view, it was GMail with its top-posting proportional-font-only interface that killed email and mailing lists.
andrei_says_ 3y ago
Both email and chat are ephemeral and make things really difficult to find. Who said what when about what in what thread? People use the same thread to speak about unrelated to the thread topics which makes those communications impossible to find. I’ve introduced and use basecamp with my team. It’s genius is in collecting things into projects, and in intentionally resisting complexity. Frictionless flowing focused communication - with everything in its right place, providing just enough information in activity feeds etc. It’s for high trust teams who are trying to find all needed info to get their work done, and delivers. Truly signal over noise. I am a total fanboy after trying a bunch of systems trying to be too clever, track time, create Gantt charts etc.
makeitdouble 3y ago
I had the opposite experience because of a single point I think: a Confluence/Notion centric team. Chat/email is solely for semi-live discussions ("is this a bug ? how do you do X ? where's the doc ?") and decision making ("can we release this feature this friday ?") Anything else that requires bullet points, graphs and/or more than 5 min of thinking goes into a Notion page where the team comments and argues the topic. Sometimes the Notion page will even start with Slack snippets for context, as the topic just happened to require a more constructed discussion. The magic of it is that people switch mode and write complete, coherent arguments if they're on a page, vs small the chatty style they have on Slack.

by rcarmo 3y ago

DharmaPolice 3y ago

Email is the victim of its own success. Because it had/has such dominance in the business world everyone had to live in their inbox, marketers appreciated that and lots of people grew to hate that. There have always been bad practices surrounding emails but I think it reached a point a long time ago where email itself was considered bad. Thus "email free Fridays" and internal comms plans which say email should be a last resort. People felt empowered to refuse to read many emails, especially if they were over 3-4 paragraphs. I too have colleagues who reflexively ask for a meeting in response to any email longer than a few lines, even though the issue is clearly communicated and obviously requires someone to read it and build a proper response. The ease with which we can all "jump on a call" has contributed to this. Yes, of course we've all seen email chains which go back and forth without progress but that's not a reason to assume every message will end up there.

rcarmo 3y ago
We could jump on calls well over seven years ago (I actually worked in ISDN video calling in the 1990s, and spent a decade or so working in a multinational telco, with plenty of conference calling involved). The loss of focus definitely accelerated with the rise of chat.
abalashov 3y ago
> I too have colleagues who reflexively ask for a meeting in response to any email longer than a few lines, even though the issue is clearly communicated and obviously requires someone to read it and build a proper response. Oh, yes. So much this. Except, I think it's fair to say it's managers and bosses who have this tendency, not so much colleagues.
fuzztester 3y ago
>The ease with which we can all "jump on a call" has contributed to this. I hate that term and concept "jump on a call". I often find that people don't prepare enough before the call, which defeats the purpose of the call.
lol768 3y ago
> I too have colleagues who reflexively ask for a meeting in response to any email longer than a few lines, even though the issue is clearly communicated and obviously requires someone to read it and build a proper response. I have spent many of these calls effectively just reading what I wrote in the email in the first place. Complete waste of my time.

quectophoton 3y ago

> leading to the usual "let's set up a call [to actually discuss everything in the e-mail thread]" You forgot the part where the call is scheduled for next week even though today is Wednesday. And any attempt to discuss further in text is met with "let's leave that for the call".

fuzztester 3y ago
Solid point.
cookie_monsta 3y ago
If you want to do this really well, title the meeting something generic like "catch up", don't attach an agenda or any kind of description and invite a bunch of people who weren't in the original discussion.

fuzztester 3y ago

Smaller attention spans, information overload, and consequent lack of attention to detail, are some of the reasons, IMO. And the first two of those are largely due to the uncontrolled effects of the Internet, i.e. the web and social media, on people, of course. Edit: wording

isykt 3y ago

Additionally, they refuse to answer the question that’s put to them. I am very careful with my words. I say exactly what I mean in as few words as necessary, but I find myself copying and pasting the same sentences into the chat box because the person or people reading seem to want to answer a completely different question.

silverlake 3y ago
Yes, this is the worst. I assume some people glance at the question and answer their misunderstanding.

jacobgorm 3y ago

I too long for the days of mailing lists and neatly structured email threads where you could reply to each point in order using >> markers for context and so on. In my view, it was GMail with its top-posting proportional-font-only interface that killed email and mailing lists.

andrei_says_ 3y ago

Both email and chat are ephemeral and make things really difficult to find. Who said what when about what in what thread? People use the same thread to speak about unrelated to the thread topics which makes those communications impossible to find. I’ve introduced and use basecamp with my team. It’s genius is in collecting things into projects, and in intentionally resisting complexity. Frictionless flowing focused communication - with everything in its right place, providing just enough information in activity feeds etc. It’s for high trust teams who are trying to find all needed info to get their work done, and delivers. Truly signal over noise. I am a total fanboy after trying a bunch of systems trying to be too clever, track time, create Gantt charts etc.

makeitdouble 3y ago

I had the opposite experience because of a single point I think: a Confluence/Notion centric team. Chat/email is solely for semi-live discussions ("is this a bug ? how do you do X ? where's the doc ?") and decision making ("can we release this feature this friday ?") Anything else that requires bullet points, graphs and/or more than 5 min of thinking goes into a Notion page where the team comments and argues the topic. Sometimes the Notion page will even start with Slack snippets for context, as the topic just happened to require a more constructed discussion. The magic of it is that people switch mode and write complete, coherent arguments if they're on a page, vs small the chatty style they have on Slack.