Communications Guide
- Rob Coons
Pet Loyalty Slack & Communications Guide
Remote work is a great way to unleash individual potential and deconstruct a one-size-fits-all paradigm. But, without a good communications plan, a lot of the spontaneous creativity that drives businesses is thrown out the window. A good communications policy helps separate the “baby” of collaboration and natural interaction with the “bathwater” of static working hours, commuting in traffic, and having to wear shoes to meetings.
Communications matrix
Realities of startups: Your colleagues are busy. Chat feeds can push information out of view quickly. Talking is faster than typing. Products can break and huge time-sensitive RFPs can instantly shift priorities on any given day.
Knowing where, how, and when to communicate ensures that high-priority communications are heard while lighthearted chit chat and ideation also have a place.
| Urgent/Important | Not Urgent |
|---|---|---|
Synchronous | Phone call or Slack Huddle to relevant parties. | Add to existing recurring meeting agenda or, if there is none, schedule a meeting with an agenda. |
Asynchronous | Tag relevant parties in a public slack channel, call or huddle if no reply | Tag relevant parties in a public slack channel |
Private | Phone call or direct message | Phone call or direct message |
Urgency
Is the problem actively causing a service outage or costing the company resources? If so, it’s urgent. Feel free to get the attention of relevant parties with a phone call, huddle, or direct message via any mobile platform.
If not, you can match the communications to natural cadence by placing the question in an ongoing meeting agenda or in a public Slack channel where any party can help out.
Synchronous
Is the discussion something that requires back-and-forth communication and problem solving? Going into the problem, do you have all of the information to build a plan, or do you need to talk to people?
If information needs to be actively shared to build a plan, then likely it’s best done synchronously, or “happening, existing, or arising at precisely the same time.” These are best done over a video call or as part of a meeting.
If it’s an announcement, a single question, or similar need; feel free to handle it via text. This preserves a written record and makes it easier for others to reference, to chip in, or to build on.
Complexity is also a key component of synchronous communication - anything too complex simply doesn’t translate well to text.
Privacy
In all areas, keep private communications private. The most obvious private discussions would be ones about finances or personal health. For this communications guide, though, the definition of private is “anything that you want to be private,” that simple. Private communications are best done digitally via direct messages, and phone calls are always a good way to keep things 1:1.
Slack
Slack is the killer app for remote work when done well, and a net-negative on team productivity when done poorly. Slack should empower you, not bog you down. Team members should not be beholden to slack the way 00’s employees were chained to their email. However, it should be a source of spontaneous brainstorming, idea sharing, and building of collective knowledge. Here’s how I do that.
People (Users)
Teams and User Groups
Make sure to keep user groups updated so that a message to “@sales-team” pings all relevant parties. This makes it easier to keep messages public while allowing people to keep notifications to a minimum without missing conversations or questions that involve them. Updated teams also adds value to status updates, as it lets you see at-a-glance who on a team is available.
Pro tip: Tag user groups instead of @here or @channel tags to avoid accidentally sending too many notifications.
@Tagging
One key item to preserve public info sharing and grow institutional knowledge is to direct non-private questions to an individual as a tagged public message. This exposes all members of the topic channel to the knowledge that might be shared, and it answers the question for anyone else who might not have felt comfortable asking. It also makes the text searchable in the future.
Profiles
As a global company, our profiles are a quick primer to help newcomers and colleagues understand our current position.
What are you working on?
What’s your title?
What languages do you speak?
What country and time zone are you in?
What is influencing you lately (books, music, hobbies, etc)?
Status
If you’re stepping away from your desk, on vacation, or have any other status-related updates for the team, the best way to communicate this is with a status. This puts an emoji next to your profile, makes it clear to anyone DMing you, and prominently presents it when viewing who is available on a team or in a campaign.
It’s common for groups to have a #PTO or #out-of-office channel, and this is a good redundancy to share details, get approval, or other communication-related updates. But the best way to share that you might have a delay in feedback is with a Slack status update.
How to QICKLY Update Your Slack Status
Slack <> Google Calendar Integration for Status
Full explanation of integrating Google Calendar and syncing status is here:
Channels
Channels are about placing conversation in public spaces so that collaboration can be more spontaneous, ideas can flow & excitement can generate, and institutional knowledge is gained.
Generally, channels are open to everyone for open understanding of what each team, campaign, or product is working on; but people aren’t expected to actively monitor all channels.
Team Channels
These are a great catch-all for general questions around Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Web Dev, Product, Leadership, etc.
Campaign Channels
It’s OK for a channel to be temporary or ephemeral. It’s good to keep transitory, “disposable” brainstorming contained to a channel where multiple people can jump in and non-stakeholder parties can see what’s happening.
For a marketing campaign involving a leash company, for instance, it’s better for the conversation to be contained within a channel instead of a group DM. Here’s why: The team is having a convo about a cross-functional, complex campaign; so it’s entirely possible an unrelated team member might know something about tools we have, features in development, or partnerships that could bolster the campaign. Also, because it’s cross-functional, the conversation doesn’t fit cleanly in a team-specific channel.
Product Channels
In our case, it makes sense to have channels around products & features. Shelter Buddy, Adopets, and Pet Loyalty Hub (Perks).
Private channels
These are private group communications that are best if searchable by involved parties. Examples here are human resources discussions, leadership strategy discussions, investment and financial strategy, corporate governance, and the like.
Threads
Once a channel or team gets big enough, it’s great to have thread discipline, meaning, formatting channel posts as announcements with discussions to follow underneath. In many cases, I recommend making a channel for leadership announcements where only admins can post to the channel and follow up conversations must be threaded.
Content Channels
Note: It is not advisable to have channels dedicated to types of posts. If I’m a marketer, I want to report to #marketing or #revenue to see marketing-related messages, not have to check a separate channel for “marketing meeting attendance.” If you cannot make the marketing meeting, the relevant parties are all already checking #marketing, so there’s no need to spread information thin across more channels here.
Another example is #good-to-knows. If there’s a good-to-know piece of information relevant to sales, it should be posted in #sales. Why spread it out?
Channel naming conventions [Temporary Heading]
Channels serve a handful purposes:
general purpose, all-team by topic (#random, #general, #positivity)
team-specific by general function (#sales, #engineering, etc)
Cross-team by campaign (#adp-integration)
Bot reports (#crm-salesforce, #rollbar xyz, #new-lead-notifications)
Business-unit specific (#sbi-v2, #sbi-v3)
Formatting
Use an underscore “_” to denote hierarchy, and use a hyphen “-” to replace a space.
So #product_ui-ux allows a multi-word sub-team under the overarching product team.
Notes: I want to label campaign- and problem-specific channels so that they don’t roll into the fold. What are the types of channels I’m seeing arise? I also want to roll automated notifications into similar channels.
By customer (#cust-)
By feature or tool (powerBI, ezVet, ) (#…<tool>)
By vendor or bot integration (rollbar, aws, etc.) (#…bot)
By campaign (#camp-
How do we use naming to help group these? CS_Title, ENG_Title, etc…
DMs (direct messages)
DMs are for fun side chats and work-related chats that are private.
Requesting leeway for personal health issues, questions about pay, personnel concerns, and others are all game for DMs. We respect your privacy and anything you’re not comfortable sharing in a regular channel is fine to be shared in a direct message.
Integrations
Gmail
Internal email is rife with concerns. The Gmail>Slack integration lets a team member share an email directly and discuss before formulating a reply.
Project Management (Trello)
This lets people create cards & tasks out of Slack messages. Useful when someone is requesting support from you - you can say “alright I created a task and here it is,” so the person can know they’ve been heard, see the due date, and track its progress.
One pitfall of remote work is that people can toss you requests and asks that are hard to gauge the urgency. You don’t want to create a perception that you’re ignoring them, but also, you can’t just have people bump low-priority tasks to the top of your to-do list just to be nice. This approach helps create a middle ground to show you’re on it, but it needs to fit within your existing work.
Google Calendar
This comes standard in Slack and creates a channel that helps you stay on top of your meetings.
Thread Bot
Thread Bot can be added to channels to remind people to use threads (instead of spamming the main channel) without a person having to do it.
Calendar
For synchronous, important, non-urgent items, it’s best to meet. Top priority is to place it on the agenda for a regular meeting.
If no regular meeting exists that’s relevant to the parties needed, schedule a call.
Make the event editable by all parties so that there’s no back-and-forth of the proposed time doesn’t work.
Calendar Etiquette
Attendance - For updates to meeting attendance, be sure to update your availability and plans to attend. In the name of redundancy, it’s also recommended to DM the meeting host if attendance changes.
Edit Access - I’m not sure if this can be a default, but it’s nice to make calendar items editable by all parties so that notes and attachments can be added and new times proposed when necessary.
Meeting Notes / Agendas - Highly recommended to have an agenda for every meeting. Rob does this by keeping a template agenda as a text replace in keyboard settings so it works on all devices. Attaching notes from Google Docs is also nice.
Marketing, Sales, & Customer Success: Weekly meetings with no agenda are optional, provided attendees mark their attendance as “Declined” when no agenda is present.
Agendas are to be added to meetings 24 hours prior to the meeting’s start.
In remote organizations, email is best for automated messages from vendors & external communications.
Why?
Slack has edits, reactions, threads, opt-out for groups, readability, reminders, and more.
Slack isolates client communications from a catastrophic “reply-all” that contains sensitive internal discussion, pricing detail, or private comments. I’ve personally seen private client communications several times due to lack of reply-all discipline!
Slack has Huddles that allow people to quickly solve issues if both are clearly available for synchronous communication.
Most “From” emails from teammates are calendar invite updates, file shares, and other automated messages that desensitize readers from reacting appropriately to an authentic or important message from a teammate.
Got an email you want to share? Check out this Gmail > Slack integration that shares email with relevant parties and isolates internal discussion to Slack.
Redundancy
Until these systems are cemented, redundancy is a good idea.
Have a question around a Trello task? Tag the concerned party in a Trello comment and also share the card with them in a Slack direct message.
Going to miss a meeting? Mark yourself as unavailable and also add a note to send to all recipients via email (even better to message them in Slack, too).
Taking a day off? Leave a comment in the #out-of-office channel and also mark it on your calendar.
Extreme redundancy isn’t the long-term ideal, but as teams acclimate to a remote-first strategy, redundancy is crucial in meeting people where they are.
Balancing push-pull with redundancy: ensure it’s done in a way that is equally “push” and “pull.” For instance, a question that’s asked in Slack, Email, and SMS is more likely to be annoying. But asking a question in a Trello task (pull, lives in a low-traffic environment) and Slack DM (push, forces it to a person’s queue) is a nice balance.
Notes and Best Practices
Readability
Sample post style:
Use Emoji and Bold to create subject line
Then lead with the ask in a separate line and/or with italics.
Consider the difficulty of reading a huge block of text without first knowing why you’re being told to read it. Is it a product question? An engineering question? Is someone asking you to take over a client or just to provide some commentary? If you read an entire paragraph without context, then the ask is buried in the middle or at the end, then the person has to re-read your entire paragraph to understand it. Also, consider that your colleagues, like you, are working on several different initiatives throughout the day. If you @tag them and pull them into your world, make it easier for them to switch from their world to yours by making it clear why they were invited. Note that this huge block of text is intentional to compare the difference between simple and direct statements versus large blocks. Also note that there’s tons of room for details once the reader understands the context and can dive in, but leading with all of the detail without first setting the tone is more likely to make the reader’s eyes glaze over before they’ve fully gotten to a level of understanding with you.
Note that the above is just an example and doesn’t need followed. The main takeaway here is to identify specifically what your ask is of a teammate before introducing them to a long text block full of details and context. Thanks!