NaBloPoMo is over (otherwise known as National Blog Posting Month). I wrote a grand total of 0. Just to be a radical, here is a December blog post very few are after. Regarding the organisational use of Slack (if you don’t know what it is, just think of Microsoft Teams but better).

If I were a Slack Implementation Manager…

For most of my professional life, communication has been channelled through Slack and this obviously has been supercharged with all that C word business and an increase in remote working patterns. So when I saw this post:

Do Slack implementation consulting (change managers more than tech admins) exist and if so, does anyone know a good one?

— Benji Portwin 🇺🇦 (@benjiportwin) November 17, 2022

It made me think… If I went into a new business and was asked to set up a Slack workspace and try to improve communication across the organisation, what channels would I bring over from previous workplaces.

Here is an unassorted x5 (note: I shall be using alternate names of channels than their real ones).

#office-chat

Now if you work somewhere with multiple locations then this can be very handy. Each office location would get its own channel - e.g. glasgow-office or beijing-office. These types of channels mostly get used for things like sharing local events, news that affects that specific region & helpful rules/policies that are location specific. For example:

• everyone is going to the pub this Tuesday… here are the details, all are welcome
• politician has said this thing and it effects our work in this way
• help! I need to know how to access bike parking in the building
• the office building is changing the building passes to get into the building and you need to change yours by next Thursday by doing this procedure

Bam! This type of channel can help a ton.

Why do I like it?

It embraces the “go where the users are” principle and instead of posting in some random intranet page few wish to visit or knows exist. Instead you can get access to info in a space you’re bound to visit frequently. This can be beneficial for community building as it makes it easier and less scary to join social events and have banter with colleagues that you’d have otherwise never have actually spoken to. Unless you are some incredible social butterfly ofcourse.

#research-share

Various previous jobs have had something similar but Slack provides a great forum for people to share interesting tidbits and findings from users.

Some cultures prefer to simply add links to the research, some record video presentations of the findings, others do threads about whole studies, some have had a daily post sharing one tiny snippet of qualitative feedback about an experience. All forms have been valuable.

Why do I like it?

I guess the main reason is it builds empathy with users and gives some clues on what we could do to make things better. It also gives the biggest return on investment of the research. I hate the idea that someone takes time and effort to both to construct some research + a person spends their time giving us feedback and it languishes in some miro board or google doc somewhere never to be utilised as it could be.

#emoji-vote

During the first few weeks of a job, one thing I noticed was why so many colleagues all had the same custom emoji status. I was perplexed. It was a little racoon doing a forward roll. I thought I must be missing something & eventually stumbled upon a joyous little channel that brings a smile to my face very frequently.

Essentially the channel is a place people share an emoji that moves them or a custom emoji’s they’ve added in Slack. Most often these are animated animals but can also be topical. At the end of each month a vote occurs to crown the winner and should colleagues wish they can adorn their Slack status with said fun new custom emoji.

A great source of custom emoji’s is somewhere like slackmojis.com. So you can get a vibe of what the entire channel is like by just visiting that page.

Why do I like it?

Quite simple… It’s fun. It’s expressive. It’s communal and feels organic. No matter who you are, without any word of reasoning, you are an equal in the land of sharing fun, cute new emoji’s. No matter how bad your day is going… that place will always remain joyful.

#ask-a-profession or get-help-from-a-profession/team

Lots of the time, people are trying to affect some form of complex change and it would be beneficial to get a professions take on x or y question or conundrum. Nobody is a unicorn that knows it all. For example, you might have a question about French data protection laws, someone’s view if doing this cool new thing has any clinical safety impact or maybe you want another perspective on the ethical impact of some new service being discussed.

In different organisations this has taken many forms from private channels, sorta focus group channels to open channels that are simply Q&A.

If I was starting from scratch in an org I’d ideally have:

• uniform names for these types of channels (so easier to find other similar channels)
• split by experts in their field (one channel per profession/expertise)
• every colleague with that expertise can field questions in that channel but someone would be on-call for urgent q’s
• some sort of uniform way to acknowledge the post is being reviewed/actioned (e.g. an emoji tick by someone once they pick it up).

This also means each product/service team would have their own channel for those seeking to ask questions about the stuff they are responsible for.

Why do I like it?

Aids-multidisciplinary problem solving/co-creation from more diverse sets of people. Maybe most practically, it’s hard to ever know what specific person can answer an often very specific question when you are working in a totally different profession yourself. So these channels save a tremendous amount of time in just finding a person to help in the shortest amount of time possible. Making it easier also encourages people to do it and not procrastinate from seeking help/advice.

#upcoming-release / #released

Now both pre-release and post-release channels are excellent and I’ve seen companies with both or just one. The basics of these channels are to have some sort of uniform post or workflow that means teams can share what is about to be released, why and when. My gut is pre-release is most powerful because often colleagues (often marketing or some form of training/learning and development function might want to share information about what users will see soon). At the most basic level I’d have:

• which team is releasing this
• when is it due to be released
• what is it (ideally a video demonstration of what it does)
• why does it exist/what problem does it solve
• kudos/credit to whom helped out

Why do I like it?

If done early then it helps to get more eyes on future changes and in theory can catch any last minute issues. More organisational awareness of how the product/service/thing is evolving. Practically helps other teams organise their work - e.g. updating training materials or using it in future marketing pushes if it is missing from their radar.

From a total selfish point it also is a fantastic resource to link back to. If someone asks about feature x or y then going back in the history to find these posts is useful. I would suspect too that, much the way a show and tell demonstrates how a team is trying to improve things and give the opportunity for feedback, this has similar benefits. It will also count as good promotion for the team as it showcases people doing, often, great things and getting the credit they deserve.

Fin

Did I answer…

Do Slack implementation consulting (change managers more than tech admins) exist and if so, does anyone know a good one?

I do not think I did. The answer is no on both counts. However if I went into a new organisation and someone gave me the responsibility of crafting how Slack could work to help be organisational glue (and I’ve seen this fail and Slack get eaten alive by people clinging to Microsoft Teams before) I’d happily give them the above x5 suggestions as a starter!

Note

This is in no way sponsored by Slack. If I read this again in a few years. Slack probably will have been replaced by something much better. The fundamentals I hope are still valid.