(2016-03-08) Fried Is Group Chat Making You Sweat

Jason Fried: Is group chat (Group Messaging) making you sweat? What we’ve learned is that group chat used sparingly in a few very specific situations makes a lot of sense. What makes a lot less sense is chat as the primary, default method of communication inside an organization.

We’ve also seen strong evidence that the method and manner in which you choose to communicate has a major influence on how people feel at work. Frazzled, exhausted, and anxious? Or calm, cool, and collected? These aren’t just states of mind, they are conditions caused by the kinds of tools we use, and the kinds of behaviors those tools encourage.

The Positives: Group chat is great for…

1. Hashing things out quickly

2. Red alerts

3. Having fun

4. A sense of belonging

The Negatives

1. Mental fatigue and exhaustion

2. An ASAP culture

3. Fear of missing out or not having a say.

4. Thinking a line at a time rather than a thought at a time

5. Implied consensus

6. Knee-jerk responses

8. Rambling and repetition

All sorts of eventual bad happens when a company begins thinking one-line-at-a-time most of the time.

9. Over-informing everyone in real-time.

10. Chat reminds you that you’re behind.

11. 25 used to mean 1.

Group chat breeds big numbers. The bigger the numbers, the more you’re missing.

12. Unread what?

13. Manic context-shifting and continuous partial attention

14. An inability to review and reference later. Ever try to go back and find an important conversation in a chat room or channel? Maybe you find a chunk, but how do you know if it’s the whole thing?

15. Lack of context

Real-time sometimes, asynchronous most of the time.

When you look at the document later, it’s unclear if there was a conversation about this document because the conversation lives elsewhere

16. Presence, assumptions, and expectations

17. Communication across time-zones.

So here’s what we’re trying to do

Contrast this with email’s tightly scoped subject headers and a readable list of participants

Asynchronous communication happens on message boards and comment threads that are attached to every object in Basecamp (to-do lists, individual to-dos, documents, announcements, check-ins, etc).


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