Sharpen your axe

Should it be a mail or in chat? direct or in a channel? if it would be via a meeting, could I have the information sooner? Do I really need this information right now?

These are the questions we should implicitly ask ourself every time we need to convey a message. Each team will eventually find his communication style. I like to help let the information flow in the right directions.

I've tried to analyse the way interactions occurs at work and how the tools I use can be tweaked to support a better flow of communication. A usual day is full of interactions with colleagues, interruptions and multi tasking. This absence of focus can drain fast all the energy left.

The same message can be conveyed through several channels, with different outcomes.

In the pyramid of communication methods, we should always try to prefer the asynchronous communication layer.

In this way, synchronous communication can be used efficiently only to take decisions about work on which reasoning has already been made. In fact, we often tend to call a meeting in which both the definition part of the problem, the analysis and the discussion must be done. This often leads to hasty decisions given by the energy left and remaining time of the scheduled meeting. I would recommend to use asynchronous tools, like docs, wikis and mail to inform. Messaging systems to discuss a topic, and as a last resort to decide on something that has already been processed a meeting.