At some point, organizations determined that faster communication would mean more work accomplished. This assumed that the bottleneck was the time it took us to communicate. The true bottleneck to getting more done is undistracted time to complete critical tasks.
To reduce distraction in the workplace here is a communication best practice.
- In general, if something is not urgent, wait to communicate until it is needed or there is an appropriate time to communicate it. Not everything that captures your attention should be communicated immediately. This should go in your task capture system.
- Verbal Communication should be used when emotions are involved, it is urgent, or a discussion is needed. This includes Phone, in-person, group meetings, and office stop-ins.
- Phone should be used for urgent, sensitive, or immediate clarifications.
- Meetings are for in-depth discussions, decision-making, and brainstorming, when you need to block time with a busy person, and when more than one person is required for a discussion.
- Text communication is less data transfer than verbal communication but allows for detail. The default should be disengaged from these communications throughout the day to preserve your ability to accomplish critical work.
- Email should be used for non-urgent, detailed, and formal communication. It should not be used in situations where there are more than 3 back and forth messages. In this case, this should be verbal. If either party is angry, upset, or frustrated, this should be a conversation. Do not problem-solve or “figure things out” in email.
- Jira (or a similar tool) should be used when requesting specific actions from someone. Discussions related to an action should be had within the task commenting feature.
- MS Teams chat (or a similar tool) is for real-time collaboration and urgent quick questions. When a meeting or Jira conversation does not fit, this should be used to replace those email conversations that require an understanding of the full thread of the conversation and drawn out back and forth. When sending a chat, be aware that your chat may be fast but it is potentially disrupting the other person’s productivity, and don’t let the easiness of the chat take precedence just because it is easy. This is also good for the non-work related less formal conversation.
- This is a best practice and not a required practice. Acknowledge that we are humans and that we like to connect and build relationships and sometimes we need to call each other and pester someone when they are busy.
Maybe you can use a version of this in your work or team to help everybody get more done.