Will you deploy Slack or will your team deploy it without you?
In its first two years, Slack signed up more than two million users, many of them paying more than $80 per year, per user. This is unheard of in the world of enterprise software. It takes most new companies more than twice as long to do what Slack did in just two short years.
A big part of Slack’s strategy is to avoid investing heavily in sales, instead choosing to spend on marketing. In fact, Stewart Butterfield has announced publicly that, “[Slack] can get away without having a sales team in any kind of traditional way probably forever.”
Embedded in the decision to avoid a traditional enterprise sales model is a focus on bottom-up adoption. Most installations begin as one department or team using Slack and spread organically from there. Slack’s entry to an organization often doesn’t often come through a CIO. Instead, shadow IT deploys it in smaller pockets of an organization.
At one giant TV network in New York, Slack has popped up all over the organization. When an employee needs to liaison with another department, they’re forced to hunt around for invitations to other Slack teams. Slack has spread to the point where leadership needs to come up wth a strategy for merging organically grown Slack teams. Doing this isn’t easy, especially when each team has developed their own way of working within Slack.
Executives everywhere are faced with a choice. Either they can be deliberate about installing Slack, or wait for it to spread to the point where they have no choice but to consolidate and take control.
As you can imagine, the leaders that control the Slack narrative from the beginning end up with happier, more productive employees. Deliberately designed Slack installations end up avoiding many of the traps that befall organic, hodge podge, installations. They have more engaged employees, better channel structures, less noise and generally follow more best practices. Teaching good habits is much easier than breaking bad habits.
