Does Chat Belong in the Enterprise?
Chat; the email killer. Chat, the automation solution. Chat, the virtual watercooler. There has been a great deal of conversation the past year about the explosive growth of Slack, and by extension chat as a tool in the workplace. But some recent FUD has started to also surface, questioning the role that chat can have in the workplace.
It makes sense to acknowledge a few things upfront:
- Chat has been a tool in Enterprise since shortly after the IRC RFC
- Chat implementations have had limited success and longevity
- Development and Operations teams are areas of exception… but offer huge learning potential for other business functions
Large company
As a company grows, there tend to be new challenges. A common theme is around the role communication plays in the process of scaling. There tends to be a limit to effectiveness of tools and process. There are are many ways that companies have solved (or attempted to solve for) these challenges. But for the scope of this article I’m focusing on the opportunity that I see for chat as a tool. Specifically articulating the view that chat, as a tool, has amazing potential.
Transparency == Alignment
Email was an iteration on the letter or office memo, it was designed as a 1:1 communication tool. The default action when you craft an email is to choose who to include. This makes email a medium that defaults to exclude everyone and requires explicit addition. But what if you don’t know who to include?
If you’ve worked in a large company you have experienced the inefficiency of being added to a split email thread, the black hole of a distribution list, or the horrible pain of a reply-all thread that just… will… not… end. Email, as a tool, was not designed for this type of communication. So, stop hammering the screw.
The introduction of any new tool is benefitted by a clear use case. Forcing the use of chat in place of all email, is likely to fail. Even with tools like Sameroom or Slackline, the level of effort to establish communications is often introducing more complexity instead of increasing productivity.
At the same time, the desire to hack chat into a broader set of use cases is a great indication of the tool’s potential. In my opinion the most significant reason for this is the transparent nature of chat.
Email operates from the basic starting point of exclusion. A new email starts with zero recipients. The author then has to explicitly add individuals of groups to the message. This is appropriate if you have a very well defined audience. However, in so many instances this is just not the case.
As a company grows the this becomes even more complex as the new members lack cultural equity. Knowing or finding the right resource becomes a significant factor in progress and success of a project.
By comparison, chat has a model that starts from a place of inclusiveness. If you combine this tool with a cultural norm that encourages empathy; finding the right resources can be greatly facilitated by sending a message to a few channels. This also serves the secondary purpose of informing members of a channel that someone is working on a new project, or searching for a resource.
This type of transparency has the ability to align objectives. For anyone who has worked in a large company, you’ve likely experienced a time where two teams are working toward the same goal without any knowledge of the other team until a significant effort has been expended. In my experience this is seldom intentional; but the tools to create this alignment are often heavy handed and stifle progress. Chat is a low effort way to broadcast alignment to a broader audience.
Broaden the signal; manage the noise
As a team grows into a company, and companies grow to have organizations and business units, communication gets hard. Chat is not going to magically solve this challenge. But, chat can be a tool you can use in an effort to reduce the impact. At the most basic level, communication is the most amazing big data challenge; it’s all about the signal:noise ratio. As a tool, chat allows you to focus the signal and broadcast it more widely, to a broader audience. The reduction of noise at some point becomes a conversation around how the tool is used and an aspect of professional development.
Just like the existing knowledge workers from 15–20 years ago had to learn to use email; many of today’s workers need to be afforded training on how to use chat.
As an example, I recall a job I had early in my career as the ‘Technical Assistant’ to a VP at a large bank. My daily responsibilities included printing all of the VP’s emails. They would then read them, make notes or highlight certain sections, then I would file each email. Yes, in a filing cabinet.
The VP was smart; but they had not yet grasped how to use email as a tool… instead, they threw people-power at the problem.
Chat is going to face a similar challenge in large enterprise companies, as well as smaller businesses outside of the tech sector. This is why the UX and the onboarding experience is so important in the enterprise. Workers will need to be trained on using chat. Folks don’t need training on how to chat, that has already passed the grandparent test. But it would be helpful to have training on how to fit chat as a tool into existing workflows and increase productivity; instead of just providing more emoji at work…. not that there is anything wrong with that. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾🙄
There needs to be a clear plan and adoption path for moving beyond the ‘fun’ of 💃🎉🙈 to business impact.
To wrap-up, I see a huge opportunity for chat as a tool in Enterprise companies, but long-term success requires an intentional and planned approach.
In my next post I’ll discuss my ideas on ‘how’ I see chat becoming the next successful tool in the Enterprise. I’ll provide some examples of successful business workflows made possible through chat across Sales, Marketing, and Support.
