Day 1 Session Notes–Beyond Buzzwords: Adding Heart to Effective Slack Communication

— Thank you for amazing welcome and excited to be here

  • It reflects how meaningful communication supports resilience and weaving thread of human connection going forward

— Humbled to join this conference and thank you for having us

— About us

  • Lauren Gatewood: Lead Design Program Manager for Central DesignOps, Salesforce
  • Laine Prokay: Principal Design Program Manager for Central DesignOps, Salesforce

— Our focus is that we are not aligned with one product team, but entire design org of 500 employees, and we connect through Slack

  • Slack is main connector for DesignOps, but not everyone uses it on a daily basis

— Slack as main communication tool, but swap it out with tool of choice

— Background

  • Why connective asynchronous communications supports resilience
  • Tips and tricks to apply to asynchronous communications

— Slack is making enterprise work simpler and more productive

  • Significant work OS embraced by 200,000 organizations across the globe

— Good async comm between all team members

  • So why does usage fall off from time to time?

— As we sit at our computer, and use software tools

— It’s easy to forget people are behind on-screen text

 

— Example of “hi” message, which is like someone walking up to desk and staring at you

 

— And an ‘@here’ is comparable to yelling at crowded office floor

 

— If someone tags the whole design org it’s like someone getting too heated at a town-hall, and people feeling on the hook

— To bridge gaps, need to understand how communication is so important and how people communicated in the past in general

— From 99.5% of past hundred years, people spoke face-to-face in small communities and people knew one another

  • As communities grew so did ideas and more voices to connect people and we were progress bound

— As humans, we are amidst new styles of communication and don’t have ton of experience doing especially well

— How has evolution changed how we receive and share info with each other?

— While we might not have evolutionary experience, it’s not for lack of trying

  • 35 GB of data consumed a day by knowledge worker, and comparable to 94 hours of TikTok scrolling each day

— Amount of info humans consumed each day was over 350% from 1980 and raining data from screens into minds

  • Work needs scannable, clear, and concise info for busy minds
  • Clear paths of understanding required to show the why of what’s going on

— Sounds simple, but hard to do. Why?

  • We are not experienced in screen to screen communications. Working memory can hold 3-5 item chunks at a time
  • Only partially communicating on screen, as most communication is used to navigate relationships and social order

— Understanding comes not just from words, but tone and body of language

  • Actual words are last important, with 70% of effective comm coming from non-verbal components
  • Better connection from vocal cues or body language

— Need more than words to understand, engage to take in a message

 

— Social connection is our reason for being here, and authentic social connection, increases resilience

  • And emotional pain is like physical pain, to point where Tylenol can reduce emotional pain like physical pain
  • According to Matthew Lieberman, who wrote the book Social— the pain response is a seminal achievement of brain to live, work, and play together
    • If you can’t connect with people, your idea doesn’t matter
    • No one can build a rocket ship alone

— We need meaningful communication, and which is why heart and communication matter

  • Communication can be both sustenance and nourishment

— A rice cracker is an appropriate sustenance, but people don’t want to subsist on it entirely

— Any time we can communicate over text or email, have you found yourself reading between the words on screen and wondering if something is missing?

  • Example of sustenance versus nourishment in message above, with added trust, clarity and care in the right hand message

— Words in our messages carry more than face value info, but signal social safety or threats to human connection

  • And it’s hard for human behavior to sort viable social signals via text

— Proposing clear communication grounded in need to connect, to weave substitutes for tone and body knowledge, and help people find meaning in communication together

— Let’s start with sustenance, and helping communication build trust

  • Find who message is for, and how message purpose relates to role
    • Audience will scan to see if message applies to them or not— so that people understand message for them
  • Purpose should be easily decipherable
    • Answering the question of value of message to audience
  • Orient people on what to do with information provided
    • Explicitly defining next steps to remove worry or confusion

— Will always need basic ingredients to drive message

  • Add topping of heart for meeting human-based needs and how you want recipients to feel

— Let’s leave with best practices, based on our team’s activities

— Specific tips to ensure message relevant and easy to ensure mind understands and how message can be relevant, courteous, connective, and fun

— Further refine your main call-to-action, to clearly say what is needed to be successful

  • Careful on how calls to action can move from musts to nice-to-haves
  • Three main CTAs, with any thing extra

— Match messenger to message. Message needs to come from appropriate level of leader

  • Rule of thumb: The bigger the impact, the higher the title

— Urgent and important messages that impact multiple people come from higher levels, while tools and tricks from DesignOps

— Different group sizes require different communication styles [change your style depending on message and ultimate audience]

— Be mindful of message crossover, rather than same message over and over— cater message to biggest audience first and more targeted messages as reminder to main message

— Here’s one from Rosenfeld Media

  • Trend in salaries, and direction of who to look at specific post

 

— We have millions of data coming at us, at any different time, and assume will understand them more easily and quickly— for ease of scanning

  • Using less than 300 words
  • Remove previous link to prevent dominating the message

— Don’t content overload with one post, but break into small sequence and how much to share

 

— Quick post above as example

  • See the bullet points and visible CTA

— Courteous

  • As individuals
    • General etiquette and how to set boundaries and even with own colleagues and own communication preferences.
      • Timezones, and staggering sends
    • No messages on Friday, and one large update message per day and not oversaturating designers and guaranteeing better visiblity
    • If conversation needs something different, move to call or other medium
  • Leaders
    • Set up a code of conduct to be welcoming, considerate and respectful
    • Revisit comms standarsd on regular basis, based on needs

— Example from Rosenfeld Media and Lou Rosenfeld

  • Pointing out importance of message, and clear numbered list

— For even closer to human connection, encourage collaboration and ask a question and pull features for valuable feedback from an audience

  • Seeing emojis to message

— Find ambassadors to kickstart more engagement and sharing content further

— Have colleague review message prior to sending it out to make sure message perceived the way you intended

— Pair message with short video of speaker and help establish trust and message received as intended

— Personally love example from Joe Natoli

  • He is holding his own book as he offers it to the audience, to add in that emotional weight

— Consider making message fun as well

  • Slack has special tool, and how to sprinkle in emojis and GIFs with Slack Block Kits, and embed header text to making it feel like a branded post

— Do use emojis sparingly or replace words

  • Harder to comprehend and read

— GIFs for accessibility needs

— Joke as people can’t read tones

— Fun example from manager Rachel Posman, who sent reminders to manager channel, but second follow-up got 225%, compared to reminder post

— Can’t skip AI as game changer

  • Wonderful opportunity to ideate and draft and experiment with writing styles and reduce amount of copy required

— Don’t take suggestions as is, to keep your voice

— So how do we know if it’s working?

— Before get started tips are for individuals rather than admins and have more power and Slack help center and becoming certified

— Newest features is view message activity to see how people interacted with one message. Great way to see reach and engagement overtime with employee organizations

  • Available with channels with 50+ people
  • Slack Help Center has more info

— Opportunity to dive deep into one channel over time, and paired with daily averages and posts

  • Get more info from help center

— Here are agnostic suggestions

  • Short Links for CTAs, to see if more engagement results
  • Track the number of emojis versus comments and executive leadership team
  • Qualitative feedback is also key— and speak with trusted sources over team

— Can get to workloads

— Eager to see internal workload communication

  • Take everything you see as starting point and improve with time

— Our favorite features

  • Slack clips to add in tony and body language and emojis and Gifs for human touch

— What’s missing?

  • Click through metrics, and ability to differentiate messages with miniature tooltips

— Please tell us in Rosenfeld Slack what are human-focused messaging strategies that worked well

Q&A

  1. Struggle less about communicating with others, versus us understanding our own message enough? Sources you recommend to polish our message for ourselves?
    1. Sometime draft message and sit on it for a little bit, and come back to message with fresh eyes and more time to understand what you are trying to get at
    2. One is more technical—whatever your write, say it out loud and will hear it more closely to how recipient will hear it, and think of experience change from message
      1. Read it out loud
  2. Space for org for messages that have no CTA or requirement for people to do?
    1. Innate call to be nourished by a message, and allow space for not as humans — and goal to make it being here better for us