Using Slack, the right way

8/22/2024 - 4 minutes read
MadKudu is a SaaS company distributed over two continents with 8+ hours TZ difference. Needless to say that asynchronous communication is key to make things work and Slack is the cornerstone of most of our communication. And for good reason. It's a very powerful tool but like all powerful tool, it can be a great enabler if used right, or a real source of issue and anxiety otherwise. This article is designed to explain the rule and best practice we think are the best compromise between efficient asynchronous communication, respect of other's time and the least prone to generate FOMO and anxiety.

Mindset

The most important and often underestimate enabler in using asynchronous communication tool is mindset

Slack is not WhatsApp ⇒ It is asynchronous by nature and every message is not meant to be answered immediately. Give time to your collaborators to answer. They won’t stop everything they do to validate a PR or answer a question in 5 minutes. If you find yourself in a recurring situation where your request is not met in time, question the process or the expectation.

Slack is a communication tool, not a project management tool ⇒ Unless you have direct confirmation (answer or reaction) that your message has been read, you cannot expect a hard commitment from anyone just because you sent a message on Slack.

Avoir ping as much as possible It's a very powerful tool that will trigger a notification on the receiver’s end. Because we are curious by nature, the human brain will have a hard time ignoring a direct notification. Therfore, when pingin someone, you kinda appropriate one's time.

Rules

#1 Don't ping people
You should not ping people directly unless it requires _immediate_ attention and the pinged recipients can actually do something about it.
Hey @engineers, do you know where is the documentation to restart the production server?
Hey, I looked into Notion and found nothing about how to restart the production server. No worries, I am just working on the scheduled maintenance of next week but if anyone knows, I am interested.
#2 Less is more
Make your message actionable and avoid splitting them in several messages, replace short follow-up messages with emoji reactions and make sure to use threads as they help de-clutter the channel and allow anyone to unsubscribe if they are not interested
Execute the sudo service restart command.
  • Thanks!
  • It worked!
Execute the sudo service restart command.
✅
#3 Default to public channel
If it’s not personal and related to work, use a public channel and a thread. It avoid creating private information loop that will then require several update left and right.

Slack Configuration

Because I used a misconfigured Slack for years, I know how much proper configuration of this tool is a game changer (thanks Francis ❤️).

Here is the MadKudu checklist:

  1. ☑️ Show only channels with “unread” messages (this one will change your life): Screenshot: How to configure a Slack channel to show only unread messages

  2. ☑️ Setup your default reactions

  3. ☑️ Learn the basic shortcuts

    • Mark as unread: Alt + Click
    • Search channel: Ctrl + K
    • Jump to the most recent unread message: Ctrl + J

  4. ☑️ Setup off-hours

  5. ☑️ Configure every channel with:

    • Purpose of the channel
    • SLA
This article has been written by a human.