4th Time’s a Charm: Why Slack Finally Worked for My Business
A few years ago on New Year’s Eve, my wife and I sat down to create a vision board. We had gathered a variety of magazines, including the tech magazine Fast Company because part of our vision included our online tech non-profit Stories Lived showcasing inspiring video stories of everyday people. In Fast Company, there was a lengthy article on Slack, the work productivity tool.
In my day job as the principal of a sustainability consulting firm, we obsess about efficiency of resources — environmentally of course, but also in the way we operate. From a business standpoint where most of our contracts are fixed price, this approach is critical. With fixed price contracts there are only two ways to scale business and increase margins:
- Do more in less time.
- Deliver services with lower salary positions.
At my prior employer, even though we worked in an open office environment, we implemented an instant messaging system for our internal communications (Skype). In fact, it was in large part because of this environment that we went to a chat system to reduce distracting verbal conversations, but also, we knew it would reduce unnecessary email chains. With that mindset already in place, I had heard about Slack and was intrigued after seeing the Fast Company segment.
In the ensuing few years, I experimented with Slack three different times with three different organizations. It never worked for me, or for the organizations. I am a techie, and even I found it hard to engage. I knew it was widely adopted, and people loved it, so why was Slack not working for me?
As soon as everyone started working remotely due to COVID-19, there was an onslaught of free opportunities to delve into the topic of productivity. There has been a certain irony to this for me personally, as I can become exceedingly non-productive by spending all of my time studying how to be more productive. However, I figured 30 minutes for myself and one of my staff to attend a video conference couldn’t hurt. Someone mentioned Slack again on this call. Knowing enough about the platform, I realized that I was in a different situation, and it was worth another shot. We were already working remotely, using Google Chat / Hangouts as our messaging tool, so it was easy to at least give it a try. This time it worked.
I am a techie, and even I found it hard to engage…so why was Slack not working for me?
A little while later, I was on a Zoom happy hour with some friends and found myself explaining why Slack was working for us. Suddenly it became rather clear why I had struck out before. The following are the main reasons Slack failed (or I failed…) before, and subsequently, why it is working for us now.
Full Adoption
I tried to implement Slack when I was at my prior employer. Not everyone was always as comfortable as I trying out new tech hacks. It was a leap to even go to the instant messaging concept to reduce office noise and emails. Suddenly introducing a different tool, and really a different philosophy of messaging, was a bit too much for everyone. If not everyone is going to use the system, it won’t work. The non-adopters will continue sending emails or other messages (negating the productivity gains), and more importantly, will be left out of the conversation and miss important things.
I now have my own company with different staff, and this time we had more buy in. With all of us using it, the system works, and we are able to start seeing the benefits. We immediately abandoned our single stream Google Chat. I believe that now we have developed a culture around this philosophy of work messaging, and as we bring new people in, they will understand that there is no alternative other than to use this system.
Enough Regular Workflow / Engagement
As many of us do, I often serve on professional committees and boards. Communications with these groups can be massive time sucks. Meetings, if not well organized, can be counterproductive and drag on. “Reply All” email threads can go on for weeks with intermittent flare ups. Our American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE) tried to give Slack a shot to streamline and make better use of everyone’s time. While we definitely grappled with the prior issue of full adoption, I noticed another problem on my end. While I was more comfortable using Slack from a technical standpoint, I never developed a good routine or habit of checking and using the application. I did not really want the full desktop notifications or email notifications pinging me when people were in there, because I wanted to compartmentalize the time I spent on that committee. I wanted to just work on that for short periods each week. I would have to force myself to remember to go back in and look. And then I was finding, as co-chair, if I needed something more immediately, I needed to email anyway, because others were not engaged fully with the system. In short, I have come to believe that there needs to be a critical mass of workflow at regular engagement intervals for Slack to be an effective tool. We did not have that, and ultimately abandoned the system.
Clear “Channels” and Enough of Them
If you are not familiar with Slack, the core feature is that it allows you to break up conversations into “channels” of workflow. And then you can have messaging within that channel to separate conversations. That is the beauty of it. If you don’t have a bunch of clearly separate topics about which you are having communications in your organization, then you probably don’t need Slack in the first place. Basic emailing, messaging, notes or other tools may be just fine, and Slack would be overkill.
In another instance where I failed to get fully engaged, I was part of an online productivity community…I find some humor in the fact that I found Slack to be failing for me, once again, in this group of people obsessed with efficiency. When I would go in to Slack, I didn’t know exactly what to do in there. The “channels” were not clear to me…they weren’t specific projects that I needed to take action on…it was more online forum posts and responses. And they would all be lit up as unread for me because there were so many people in the group. The topics were more abstract conversation topics, rather than project oriented. I didn’t know where to begin. I never learned exactly why, but ultimately the group moved off Slack and back to a private Facebook group. My hypothesis is the platform was not working well as this was a group forum vs. specific messaging about projects or workflow.
In my latest round, I have found that what is working well is that we have very clear channels. This is facilitated by the fact that as a consulting outfit, our work is divided into projects and thus the channels easily align. I believe that in the early days of my company, we probably did not have the critical mass of projects and workflow, and Slack likely would have been too much and sat idle.
Thus, I have found from my experience, there really needs to be a critical mass of three items for Slack to be a really effective tool:
Adoption — enough people embracing it and using it.
Workflow — enough regular workflow to keep people engaged in the platform.
Projects — enough (and clear) buckets of work to be divided.
I believe that now I have reached a point with my own company where these are in place, and we are finding Slack a highly effective tool for productivity and efficiency.
