Communication Breakdown

There are many methods of communication available, including email, direct messaging, team messaging platforms like Slack, phone calls, and even face to face conversations. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. Choosing the right method or methods for a given situation is the key to successful and timely communication.

Email can be a good way of providing specific information and assigning tasks with a paper trail.  The challenge is that email responses can be slow and discussions held via email often fragment as messages cross while various people are added and dropped, so the goal of email is to make the team aware of the ask and who owns completing it.  The people on the “To” line own completing the task while the people on the “CC” line are being made aware of the request and timing, as well as the source of the ask, in case the people who own the task need assistance from them or from their teams in order to complete the task.

Email doesn’t lend itself to a Single Source of Truth approach where all task assignments and status can be viewed and tracked from a single, shared platform. To solve this problem, the task should also be reflected in JIRA, Trello, or whatever tool that particular team uses to manage tasks. The initiating email might be from an executive or director to a manager who would then generate the appropriate task and subtasks for tracking purposes, attaching the email as a PDF for context.

Email alone isn’t sufficient.  At worst, it gets missed completely, or if it is too long or requires some thought prior to a response, it often gets deferred until the recipient has more time available.  When assigning a task, one needs to achieve a “positive handoff” where the recipient recognizes that the task has been assigned and takes ownership for completing the task, or at least completing the subtask that was assigned within the time frame indicated in the email. This positive handoff is as simple as responding “I’m on it.” or some other positive indication of accepting ownership. In the absence of confirmation, the sender could escalate to Slack, text messaging, or a phone call to ensure that the email hasn’t been missed and to answer any immediate questions related to it.

I used to tell my team that a manager’s deadliest weapons were his or her feet.  There are many communication channels available, but there was no substitute for a quick face to face chat to review priority, timing, and expectations.  In most cases I tried to be the “early warning system” to let team members know that tasks I had just sent them in email did not need to be completed for several days, but would require a short, thoughtful response. 

The pandemic drove us out of the office, and some companies continue to work remotely as a matter of choice. If face to face communication isn’t an option, team messaging platforms like Slack can be used in similar fashion.  Text messaging and phone calls are also an option, but text messages occur outside the normal channels of business communication and are more difficult to share internally if the task requires other team members to have visibility, while phone calls generate no artifacts that can be used later, unless one leaves a voicemail.

Direct messages are good for sidebar communications that are meant to be kept outside of normal business channels or below the radar.  Direct messaging can be a good way to reach people who are on large conference calls to privately provide a correction or additional useful data without highlighting the error to the larger group or sidetracking the ongoing narrative. A thoughtful correction or sharing of additional information via DM allows the recipient to choose whether and when to share the information with the rest of the meeting participants.

Team messaging platforms can be useful for discussing simple issues to quickly agree on a course of action. This course of action should then be communicated via either a centralized repository or an email to the group that was involved in the discussion and anyone else who should be aware of the decisions that were made. Emails tend to be stickier than group messages since many people who try to find the conversation later will have a hard time identifying in which of the many groups in their history that discussion took place. Email can be easier to search and can give visibility to more people, including people who didn’t need to be in the discussion, but do need to know the results.

Phone calls are usually related to confirming a positive handoff, though these days a quick chat via telephone may also be the best way to convey sensitive information without generating any artifacts. It also allows both parties to convey tone which may be missing or misinterpreted in other channels.

Tips and Techniques:

• Use email to make task assignments and share detailed instructions, using the To line to indicate those who own completing the task and the CC line to give others visibility into the assigment.

• Follow up an email with a quick face to face chat or use a more immediate communication method such as DM, Slack, or a phone call to confirm handoff and provide guidance around task importance, timing, and expectations.

• Direct messages are good for less formal and private communication.

• Team messaging platforms are good for discussing simple issues, but the results of the discussion should be memorialized in either a central repository or a follow up email.

• Phone calls are useful for confirming handoff or sharing sensitive information with the right tone.