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Written communication is remote work super power

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Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#31

Post by Benjammer »

jugg1es wrote: post #30

In my experience, the people most averse to writing stuff down are usually the remote engineers. Remote workers don't typically have the same cultural influence as local employees, so they tend to be somewhat alienated and therefore have fewer expectations put on them. I think this disincentivizes remote workers from fully assimilating into the culture and leads to less interest in communication. Inevitably, this end…

I have the exact opposite anecdotal experience. Remote engineers I've worked with have put a lot more effort into their writing because they understand that it's one of their only avenues to participate in the company communication culture.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#32

Post by asjw »

jackjeff wrote: post #9

Async communication is suitable to resolve some kind of issues. But it has two drawbacks: participants need to be competent at writing and reading prose (it’s harder than it sounds) and even with the best of care your ideas can easily be misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle. For problems which are not well defined, and where a lot of decisions need to be taken, especially when they verge toward the…

How can you trust someone's spoken words if they can't write?

And what's the problem in your opinion with written iterations?

I usually attend meetings, hours a day, when I have to repeat the same concepts over and over, multiple times, to the same people, because they just forget what we established hours before.

There are people at my job setting up meetings just to "recap", which is a poor excuse for "we didn't take notes and/or we weren't listening and just said yes"

At least emails are searchable...

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#33

Post by yazaddaruvala »

duxup wrote: post #26
jackjeff wrote: post #9

Async communication is suitable to resolve some kind of issues. But it has two drawbacks: participants need to be competent at writing and reading prose (it’s harder than it sounds) and even with the best of care your ideas can easily be misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle. For problems which are not well defined, and where a lot of decisions need to be taken, especially when they verge toward the…

Recently, I was so frustrated with some folks poor reading comprehension that I was thinking about an imaginary communication system that would allow for decision making where there were some rules: - No responding from mobile devices. The poor response rate is just too high. - The reader is quizzed on the the contents of the communication before they can respond (randomly generated quizzes might be amusing). - The r…

FWIW, it doesn't have to be a "new communication channel", you just documented some best practices for email.

> No responding from mobile devices. The poor response rate is just too high.

If something was left implicit or de facto re-ask for it to be explicit or de jure.

> The reader is quizzed on the the contents of the communication before they can respond (randomly generated quizzes might be amusing). > The reader has to retype the original communication themselves before they can respond....

A simple "What's you're rationale?" or if you're less confident "Sorry, I understand the action items and can execute them but I didn't follow the motivation. So I can do an even better job (or so I can make this decision without you next time), could you walk me through your thought process?"

> Timeout value, if no responses that pass the above tests in a given time frame, whomever asked gets to complete the task with no input and nobody can change the outcome for ... a week or so and everyone has to live with it. > Anyone who wants to change it after the timeout value better explain why they didn't ask before hand... no idea how this would work, yeah we're getting into the weeds here.

This is the most important email best practice that trips up junior workers. Make the default of your email your desired outcome.

Instead of: "Does everyone approve?" then if people respond asking "Ok, when should I do it? Thursday?".

Try it like this: "I'll make the change on Thursday. Please let me know if there are any concerns.".

1. Make the default response (i.e. no response) in your benefit.

2. Ensure there is a timeout value attached.

None of this is difficult or theoretical, its just a set of best practices you can get your self and others used to.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#35

Post by tomplayford »

Benjammer wrote: post #27
tomplayford wrote: post #6

Not everyone finds written comms as easy as everyone else. absolutely +1 to keeping records, but as a form of communication it's not terribly equal.

I don't know how to phrase this without sounding like a somewhat pedantic asshole, but I cannot understand this reasoning. Are we really saying there is less variability in people's spoken communication abilities than written? This concept is baffling to me. Who in the world talks better than they write? Also, in my experience, written comms is immensely more accessible and accommodating to diverse teams with people…

I was referring to dyslexia. About 5-15% of the US population have some form of dyslexia. Probably should have spelled that out.

I do agree that for non native english speakers, the written word is more accessible.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#36

Post by krm01 »

In our business, async communication is at the core of how we deal with clients. We design UI/UX for tech companies (http://fairpixels.pro) and in the 10+ years of trying out a dozen of ways to work, async email conversations were by far the most effective for us.

Email over Slack, why? Slack and other chat environments still create the expectation of realtime responses. Also, messages you type there are short and often of a lower quality.

Email is usually more longform. This forces us and clients to think first, write second.

The quality of feedback and communication is just so much better.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#37

Post by tomplayford »

RHSeeger wrote: post #28
tomplayford wrote: post #6

Not everyone finds written comms as easy as everyone else. absolutely +1 to keeping records, but as a form of communication it's not terribly equal.

I'm not sure I follow that statement. I can see an argument that text is not strictly better than verbal communication but, at worst, I'd say it's equal (for people as a whole, not for one person in particular). Some people are better at written communication while some are better at verbal.

For most people, I'll happily agree with you. From a dyslexic's perspective, being forced to only ever present one's ideas and thoughts in text is pretty restricive.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#39

Post by tluyben2 »

asjw wrote: post #32
jackjeff wrote: post #9

Async communication is suitable to resolve some kind of issues. But it has two drawbacks: participants need to be competent at writing and reading prose (it’s harder than it sounds) and even with the best of care your ideas can easily be misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle. For problems which are not well defined, and where a lot of decisions need to be taken, especially when they verge toward the…

How can you trust someone's spoken words if they can't write? And what's the problem in your opinion with written iterations? I usually attend meetings, hours a day, when I have to repeat the same concepts over and over, multiple times, to the same people, because they just forget what we established hours before. There are people at my job setting up meetings just to "recap", which is a poor excuse for "we didn't ta…

It is my problem with meetings & calls; I have no issue with effective meetings, however, a lot of people I work with (but ofcourse not all), treat meetings and voice calls just as a reminder/recap. They basically do not remember most of anything and don’t read/write anything either. So the people who take notes, read the minutes and read the docs have to sit through hours or rehash per week.

I cannot imagine how much time/money is lost by this in the world.

Re: Written communication is remote work super power

#40

Post by ponker »

duxup wrote: post #26
jackjeff wrote: post #9

Async communication is suitable to resolve some kind of issues. But it has two drawbacks: participants need to be competent at writing and reading prose (it’s harder than it sounds) and even with the best of care your ideas can easily be misinterpreted resulting in the loss of an async cycle. For problems which are not well defined, and where a lot of decisions need to be taken, especially when they verge toward the…

Recently, I was so frustrated with some folks poor reading comprehension that I was thinking about an imaginary communication system that would allow for decision making where there were some rules: - No responding from mobile devices. The poor response rate is just too high. - The reader is quizzed on the the contents of the communication before they can respond (randomly generated quizzes might be amusing). - The r…

You could only have such a system in an environment with a huge power imbalance between the sender and recipient, like Tim Cook sending a message to an Apple IC engineer. But with that kind of power imbalance all of these things happen anyways -- if an individual engineer gets an email from Tim Cook he definitely isn't firing off a poorly-thought-out reply from a mobile device.
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