What can a corporate messenger say about a company?

They say that cars and dogs look pretty much like their owners. Indeed, there might even be a scientific theory by British scientists about it. I didn’t search, just relying on my personal experience: I expect to see a gopnik driving BMW, and I don’t expect to see him driving a family-friendly and safety-minded Volvo. A woman who always asks to close the window in a hot bus usually has a sweater-clad dog on a leash.

Once Irina Nikitina told me about one managing partner: “He is great, he correctly defined the function of the HR: to deal with internal communications.” I then thought that I did not agree, but I could not understand with what. Now I know what I disagree with.

If you need to be instructed to use some software, then definitely the product has a problem with UX. Similarly, if a special person is needed for internal communications within the company, then the company is simply not designed for communications. No, I’m not saying that they screwed up on this, or that lawyers in the galley are forbidden to communicate without the permission. I’m only talking about the fact that the constant communication of employees among themselves is not the main priority for the company.

The main messenger that employees use can hint at the level of concern for internal communications, the type of leadership, and the color of the company (purple, red, blue, orange, and further along the spiral).

I just took an advertising slogan and came up with a company portrait:

• Viber says: We connect people, no matter who they are or where they are from. Make calls, send messages and much more — freely and securely. Here the focus is on free and the ability to write to anyone. In other words, it’s a spamming tool (free to anyone). It is unlikely that companies use Viber as a corporate messenger. And if they use it, then there is clearly a problem with communications. I demolished my Viber after my daughter went to school and I was added to the chat with moms. I think you understand me. Conclusion: most likely, family-type galleries (purple) sit on Viber and no one thinks about communication in the company at all.
• Skype — stay connected with everyone you care about. Everyone uses Skype out of habit: all relatives were there, then work contacts appeared there. Then came the business version. But damn it. Skype, as it was a family chat, has remained so. In the last two years there are a lot of glitches. I didn’t tear it down just because the Americans love it. If a company uses Skype for business (and even worse, just free Skype), then they will also need a special person for internal communications. Conclusion: Skype is used out of habit, so these are large galleys (blue), or just old school (but not necessarily bad) companies. Definitely, someone is needed who will support internal communications in the company.
• Telegram — private, cloud based, cloud, distributed…connect, coordinate, synchronize, encrypt. Everything revolves around safety. Therefore, it is used as the main communication channel for companies that deal with criminal, judicial, and solvers. Conclusion: if this is the only practice in the law firm, and the galley is less than 10 people, then everything is ok. Otherwise, you need an hr (= dude / gal who takes care of internal communications). Well, the types of leadership there are most likely red or orange.
• Slack — it’s the foundation for teamwork. Slack creates alignment and shared understanding across your team, making you more productive, less stressed, and just a little bit happier. There is not a word about security, but they call themselves “the foundation of communication.” Therefore, the design of this chat is based on trust and the maximum convenience of information dissemination. The output is below.

Our Axon Partners gallery has been sitting heavily on Slack since the start, and I recently caught myself thinking that it is thanks to Slack that we do not need an internal communications manager. I used to think that we were all just so cool and highly value communication (communication is one of the pillars of Agile, hell yeah). But it looks like I was wrong. Slack taught us to constantly communicate, because it is very convenient. Telegram has a completely different ideology and it would have simply ruined a distributed team of 20+ people. Not to mention Skype, or Viber.

I did not analyze ICQ and galachat. But I promise to keep digging in this direction and keep you posted.

UPD: I came across a note by Umberto Eco about the moral and ethical values of Mac and DOS developers.

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the “ratio studiorum” of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the Kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

Now let’s reverse engineer the hypothesis that a corporate messenger and even an operating system can determine the company’s DNA: when developing legal tech solutions, it would be nice to understand that a company cannot be both open and focused on information security, and a service cannot be simultaneously convenient for team work, and give management the ability to control subordinates, and so on.

So, you need to decide which side you are on.

✍️ Dima Gadomsky