I will never understand people who write "Hello" or "Hi Joe" in Slack and then just wait. It has to be some form of mental illness.
It is like calling someone and saying hello in the voicemail.
No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
61–70 of 279 posts
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#62This may sound reasonable, but the world is not black and white. If we turn every quick question into a complete meeting with agenda and whatnot, the organisation will become extremly bureaucratic. And at some point people will start making guesses instead of reaching out to experts because it is just too much work. So in my opinion, the author is a little bit selfish too. The company cannot 100% align with what best…
Yeah. Nah. 1) are your goals aligned with the ultimate success factors of the company? Probably. 2) are the people who want to stop you from doing your job aligned? Probably not. Ask yourself if people who "just want a minute" would go stick their arm in an industrial metal press, willingly. Don't they want to make a good impression? Or would this be a horrible act of self harm that is completely disruptive?
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Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#63I endorse the general thrust of this post, however: Calls can be much more effective than messaging for detecting and handling the XY problem now that users can easily screen share, because you can often see why the user wanted to do X, not just (as in their two lines of text) that they wanted to do X, and you may be able to solve Y and make them happier.
It is not about avoiding calls but avoiding calls without context.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#64It's mentioned in the post, but it never hurts to repeat it here:
https://nohello.net
It's been some years since I saw this site and ever since I always add context in all my on-line interactions with co-workers.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#65> A call is more distracting than a chat message. I highly disagree. A call has a definite start and end. Async chats leave an open thread in your mind that needs to be constantly polled and interrupt flow much more than a call.
In my experience calls rarely have a definite end. "Quick" calls often turn into 30 minutes or an hour of the colleague talking about things unrelated to the issue they wanted to discuss originally.
In the office I've had people sit at a desk next to me and just talk at me for more than an hour about themselves. Trying to politely end these kinds of conversations just results in a brief blip in their monologue before they go back to it. I've even had to get up and walk away after someone wouldn't stop talking at me.
For whatever reason there are many people who are incapable of thinking about how they're using other peoples' time. The only defense is asynchronous media like chats or emails where you aren't forced by social politeness into continuing to be disrupted.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#66My favorite impact that I've had on my organization was the "no agenda, no meeting". It became a meme, minutes before the agenda-less meeting was supposed to take place someone would send it to a meeting chat or email, usually followed with ":)", especially if I were one of the attendees. In the rare cases I forgot to follow my own stubborn rule then it was a whole show, in hindsight, probably should've broken it at least once a quarter along with some penance to really help cement it.
However, I managed to "bully" everyone into following this simple rule because I had some influence in the organization; I was a manager of a large department. Unfortunately, interns will probably get an eye-roll for such suggestions, even if they reference their superior's rule.
My point is, don't send you colleagues this link, you will come off as rude. You'll get further by e.g. feigning surprise to the lack of agenda, and maybe you get to use that opportunity to spark a conversation about the importance of an agenda. If you're a manager and above, then by all means, use your influence to force it, it will make everyone's job easier in the long run.
Oh, as for the messages that contain only "hello", just ignore them, they will either solve their own problem or quickly jump to the point once they tire of waiting for your equally pointless response. Or just have a chat with your colleagues every once in a while, maybe they genuinely care about you and your cat.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#67We cannot forget that we also loose something with working remotely (say more than 75% of the time) and that is the occasional bumping into each other at the water cooler or in the morning when coming in. These are situations you can artificially create by scheduling calls to socialize etc, but that is still not comparable with being in an actual office. By categorically saying no to quick calls, you're isolating you…
lose**, not loose, I really don't get why so many people can't learn a few basic English gotchas.
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the author means "quick call"s. They are not against scheduled calls.
Below a certain threshold, "quick calls" are the best thing to do. Some of the most inspiring discussions come from someone bringing up an issue they have right there and then. Good discussions often start from something that doesn't seem so important, that doesn't have a clear outline from the start. If there isn't the possibility to start a discussion instantly once in a little while, there is a good chance it won'…
Pray tell, why can't you do this discussion async in writing?
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Below a certain threshold, "quick calls" are the best thing to do. Some of the most inspiring discussions come from someone bringing up an issue they have right there and then. Good discussions often start from something that doesn't seem so important, that doesn't have a clear outline from the start. If there isn't the possibility to start a discussion instantly once in a little while, there is a good chance it won'…
>Good discussions often start from something that doesn't seem so important, that doesn't have a clear outline from the start. Yes, but I've never once had a "can we hop on a quick call?" turn into that. Almost every single one of those that I've encountered could've been settled in a handful of chat messages. The things you describe happen to me during unplanned asides in meetings, long-term general chat channels, o…
> My impression has been that the people who want a quick 1-on-1 call just don't like typing.
Yes, similar to my ex (can't get rid of her completely, shared custody of the kids) who always insist on sending voice messages. She just don't want to type and keep sending voice message after I told her several times I hated that because it made looking for past information super difficult.
By the way, wasn't there a slack like app that was working kind of a walkie-talkie kind of system within a team?
Re: No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
#70This particular blog post is probably too snarky to share with most people, but I've had success with gently explaining the same concept to various clients and coworkers, especially ones who are working different with different schedules or time zones.
The trick is to frame their behavior as inconvieniencing them rather than you. In other words, if they send you all the details up front, then you can send them a good answer as soon as possible rather than needing them to drop what they're doing later on to send you a follow-up reply when you ask for clarification.
I've also found that, for people who seem to prefer talking to typing, asking them to record a short Loom video of the issue usually gets them to explain the problem with enough details to solve it.