Asynchronous chat, actionable email, and working remotely

At August’s Refresh DC, Jason Wishard of EightShapes gave a talk about working remotely. He gave some general tips from his own experience and from his colleagues about setting up your workspace, managing your time, and making sure you can get things done when you’re not working from the office. And he talked a lot about effectively sharing and collaborating on designs when you’re not in the same room. The single most important aspect of his talk however, and for working remotely in general, was communication. If there’s a single theme to working remotely, it’s effective communication.

I’ll highlight three of the themes that he discussed, and color it in with some of my own experience, with Wellfire and from working in other distributed teams.

• Over communicate
• Mind the communication context
• Actionable communication

Endorsing these principles may sound like endorsing indoor plumbing to some readers. However remote work isn’t yet endemic like the flush toilet.

Over-communicate

This one can be tricky, especially if you’re concerned about overloading a colleague with information, or vice versa. As much as [written] electronic communication allows us to be surgically specific, it frequently fails to capture the nuance of face to face conversation, or even a phone call. Much is communicated in person that isn’t adequately captured over email, chat, or even on the phone.

In person it’s much easier to tell whether the person you’re conversing with understands what you’re talking about, and to immediately get to the point of confusion. It’s also much easier to make sure they’ve heard you, after all, they’re in the same room (unless they’re nodding ‘yes’ while checking their email or playing Angry Birds under the table).

Over-communicating comes in different flavors. It can mean hitting multiple communication channels (email and chat) to ensure that your coworker got your message. But it mainly means giving a little bit of additional discussion to decisions. If you’re sitting next to someone working on a project you can give and get feedback as you go, and importantly, you can verify assumptions. If you’re working remotely from your teammates, you’re going to maintain a more tenuous - and more disruptive - communication channel while you work. So when you are discussing a task or a decision, you need to go a little further to ensure that you and everyone else fully understand what needs to be done and all of the assumptions.

Mind the communication context

Jason presented this as knowing when to escalate between tools, say, from email to Skype. You email a coworker, your coworker emails you back, you respond, and six emails later you agree to use a modal box for a signup form.

When there’s any kind of expected back-and-forth, especially over a short period of time, its almost always more effective to use chat than email. If you’ve already entered into a back-and-forth conversation, that should update your expectations about whether its going to continue like that. And if you’re trying to talk through some visuals then it’s best to switch to phone (or Skype, as you will). It’s not just about freeing your hands to point to items on the screen, you gain instant feedback.

The important thing is knowing when to switch between contexts or tools and also making sure everyone involved has the same understanding. It’s not always easy to figure out. There are a couple considerations. One is the nature of what you’re discussing. If it’s a quick decision, then email may suffice. If it’s a topic that requires multiple people discuss it, then group chat is probably the best thing. And if there is sufficient concern about someone misinterpreting the discussion topic, a phone call can be helpful, instead of or in addition to chat or email. Similarly, you need to consider the ability to reference the conversation. If it’s important to refer to later then it should be in transcribed group chat or a message system (say, Jabber or Basecamp).

Email is just plain unnecessary and unhelpful for most communication between you and your coworkers. If we can use the example of the paper office memo, then sending someone an email for a quick question is like giving them an official memo to respond to, instead of leaving a sticky note on their desk. One line questions to “ping” someone belong in chat, not cluttering an inbox. Chat allows instant communication, but it’s also asynchronous.

There are all sorts of benefits to asynchronous communication. When you talk on the phone with someone you’re demanding of them (and yourself) the entirety of that specific space of time. Sometimes I wonder if there is a generation gap when it comes to using the phone. James Altucher captured my sentiments pretty neatly the problems of using the phone. Just as with email, there are many times when a phone call is overkill. Most remote workers perform work that lends itself to and often requires blocks of uninterrupted time. That quick question that can wait without disrupting your coworker? Yeah, chat.

Actionable communication

This one is my favorite (which is not to say that I’ve mastered it). The emphasis is on email, and indeed, Jason’s point was to use “actionable emails”. He showed an email he had sent out to plan a weekend trip, and instead of flowing paragraphs it consisted of bold headlines and bulleted outlines. Silly, his friends may have thought, but email is no place for creative, flowing prose when you need people to quickly understand what is required of them or make an adequately informed decision.

I like to use something borrowed from the military, called the BLUF. That’s Bottom Line Up Front. The BLUF is one, maybe two sentences that concisely capture the purpose of your communication, a bit of the content, what is required of the reader, and a recommendation if one is intended. The BLUF is critical when presenting information to someone with stars on their shoulder boards, but it’s also helpful when delegating tasks or discussing a topic with colleagues. It sharpens the rest of your communication, too, since it forces you to think about what’s necessary to say and what’s required in return.

You don’t always need to resort to writing your emails in sparse bullet points. Instead, take a cue from marketers and lead your reader through the email. Bolded headlines are a good start, especially for long emails. They make scanning the email later much quicker. Ever notice how sales letters and landing pages highlight what’s really important? Highlight or embolden critical points, recommendations, and questions when you want the reader to notice them.

Lastly, don’t neglect the subject header. This lowly holdover from the era of carbon copied memoranda is frequently misused. Have you ever seen a subject that looked like, “update”, “help”, “question for you”? Again, this is a great place to take a cue from marketers. The subject should provide some sort of indication of what the context of your email is and what is required in return. So “update” becomes “Site design progress update, Aug 5, 2011”, “help” becomes “Help request configuring CS5 plugins”, and “question for you” becomes “

Conclusion

Effective communications comes down to empathy, which can be hard for us stubborn introverts of the world to understand. Eloquence doesn’t matter a lick if your message isn’t being understood. You’re only saying your message effectively if it’s being understood correctly. If you can remember that distinction and nothing else, you’ll be well on the way to happily effective communication.

More:

• Jason Wishard
• EightShapes
• Refresh DC

posted by bennylope