How Slack is killing your company
A world without async communication
In many of today’s working places, there’s a problem that Cal Newport calls: The hyperactive hive mind workflow.
Which simply means that all the members of an organization are in constant, and often unnecessary communication.
And it prevents companies from getting the full value of their employees.
In today’s article we’ll discuss the reasons that make knowledge workers, of which a lot are software developers, incredibly inefficient.
The Hyperactive Hive Mind
In many companies, including all the companies I worked for, workers’ day is structured around their slack messages and meetings.
According to a 2019 study, many of them have about an hour of uninterrupted work a day.
The rest is responding to messages, meetings and emails.
There are many reasons for the way of work, but this is the most interesting one:
The misconception that asynchronous communication is easier.
Although asynchronous communication (Slack messages, emails etc.) does not require your immediate presence, which is good for some things, it' mostly takes a lot more of your time.
It extends the time of a conversation because it requires many more messages to be exchanged.
You might think that it’s more comfortable and it is better, because you choose when to respond and you have time to think about it.
But it’s way more than that.
It takes space in your mental storage, and for most of us, including me, it bothers us until we respond. And then it bothers us until we get a message back and so forth.
That creates a chain that completely breaks our ability to deep work.
We wrote about deep work and how to achieve it in another one of our articles, The simple secret of productive people.
The downsides of the Hyperactive Hive Mind Workflow(HHMW)
Employees constantly multitask
In a world that becomes more connected by the minute, we tend to constantly check emails, slack channels and WhatsApp messages, which means that we are almost constantly multitasking.
This multitasking takes significant cognitive resources and energy to switch between tasks.
these context switches take up to a third of the work day, according to Gary Keller, the author of The One Thing.
Asynchronous communication can be ambiguous
As we all know, written communication sometimes fails to deliver the nonverbal information, like tone, body language etc.
This means that sometimes you have to write more than you would say and even deliver it in multiple messages just to convey the right tone and meaning.
And in a message, the small things really matter.
There’s a huge difference between these three:
”Are you enjoying the article so far?”
”Are you enjoying the article so far..?”
”Are you enjoying the article so far???” (Sorry for being mad)
Employees do more work than necessary
Because it’s so easy to send a message, people tend to request help from a colleague rather than trying to figure out a solution for the problem they are faced with.
This results in more work for both parties (The sender and the receiver who needs to respond and help).
Imagine receiving a message that requires help with debugging a problem in a code section you have never seen before.
You need to first understand what’s written there.
Then you need to understand the problem.
And then you need to help solve it.
This kills both the sender’s workflow, because he’ll probably wait until the aid arrives, and the receiver’s because she’ll be almost forced to stop and help her colleague.
Plus, there are people (me included… sorry) who can convey an idea in one message, yet choose to do it in many shorter messages.
And there’s almost nothing more annoying and time-consuming than waiting for your colleague’s “Is writing..” to end and deliver the whole idea.
The solution to the HHMW - Optimize the Attention Capital
The Attention Capital Principle
The best tool knowledge workers have is their Attention Capital.
In other words, their brainpower.
That’s the employees’ most valuable resource for a company, and in order to extract it’s maximum value, companies must put in place optimal workflows and systems.
Example
Imagine you’re a software developer with deep knowledge of AI.
If you spend most of your day responding to emails, slacks, and context switching, you provide little to no value to your company.
On the other hand, if the company sets up a workflow in which you can research and code as much as possible without interruptions, you provide much more value to your company and you grow your knowledge and become better than you were before.
Solution #1: The process principle
Companies should set in place processes, systems and workflows the increase the performance of their employees and make their work more enjoyable.
using a simple task board(Jira/Clickup etc.) and automating processes that are done frequently and take up a big chunk of your employees’ time will do the job.
Solution #2: The protocol principle
Beyond setting up processes, companies need to set up rules for how people communicate to reduce context switching and inefficiency.
Example: Protocol for meetings
It’s no secret that meetings are a huge time-killer and mental power drainers.
In order to reduce their negative effect, make sureq to set protocols to how meetings should be scheduled and ran.
Solution #3: The specialization principle
Give your employees fewer tasks so they can be more accountable and do them in the highest quality possible. That way they can specialize.
This means they don’t lose productivity by multitasking and context switching and you don’t waste time answering too many questions.
Final words
Although we consider asynchronous communication highly valuable because it gives us the freedom to choose when and how to respond, for most of us it’s a productivity killer.
So unless the communication requires asynchronicity, like code reviews or bug reporting, aim to do it synchronously and get it off your desk as fast as possible and not let it linger and last for many back and forths.
What we enjoyed reading this week
How we turn 1,200 employees into a buzz-generation machine 🔋 by
- Tom gives us a peek behind the kimono to show us how they generate tons of traction back there in Wiz.Mediocrity is the silent killer by
- MacDaniel is a writer and an aspiring Entrepreneur and he writes a lot about mindset. And in this article, he talks about mediocrity is killing you with you noticing.Why Solopreneurship Isn’t For Everyone? by
- Solopreneurship is a very tough journey. Mostly mentally.And Anfernee details the main reasons why.
Thanks for the mention.
I too question the effectiveness of collaborative apps.
But I do agree with MacDaniel that asynchronous communication allows for personalised deep work.
To me, this is the most important.
The idea of mental storage is less talked about and yet important. Its very important as an individual or solopreneur to work in places of low/zero distractions and to practice deep work(do more per hour than more hours).
I use slack for a team of three, its still good but l think as the team grows. It becomes noisy and distracting. The principles you mentioned in the article can be effective and efficient for big companies and teams.