Communications Channels

Update schedule change: I'm dropping my Friday updates going forward: with my childcare duties and having burned through much of the backlog of items I wanted to blog about, I'll be updating only two days per week: Monday and Wednesday.

All of us use our communication tools in different ways. Some people live and breathe their social media; I'm only on Facebook in case someone from high school wants to send out information about a reunion. I'm not judging. Assuming that your intent in communication is to communicate, then what matters more is matching the expectations of how and when to communicate with whomever you're talking to; let's call them your "partner" because communication is a group effort.

Email is not urgent

For some people it is, but for me if I need something urgently (or someone needs it from me), email is not the right tool. I check my email at least once per day, but sometimes only that often, and it might be a glance on my phone to see if I need to respond to anything critical. Instead, I use the phone, texting, and instant messaging (e.g. Teams) for anything that needs an answer same day or same hour.

Asynchronous is good

We're all busy, and at any given time during the day we might be engaged in a brilliant piece of "deep work" where a five-minute interruption might cost an hour of lost momentum. What we're asking for might take some time, like running a report or pulling something from the customer's portal. Do you really want to sit on the phone and listen to your colleague log into a website? Finally, when dealing with sensitive issues I prefer to let people react and absorb in private before a real-time conversation. I tended to put this into practice during annual reviews and informing employees of their bonuses for the year: email my written assessment or the new salary, and then get on a call to discuss it. If I didn't send the information in advance, the employee wouldn't be listening to anything I said because they'd be waiting for the big message I'd build up to. This way they could get the suspense over and we could have an actual discussion.

Push and pull

Communication can also take place very asynchronously. "Push" reporting where I compile information (weekly bullets, line-of-balance reporting, etc.) and then send it out to a large group of recipients has the advantage of being asynchronous and often allows me to pull meetings off the calendar, but also clogs inboxes. "Pull" reporting is the ideal if we can train the people who need the information how to seek it. Often this doesn't mean running a report themselves, but can be posting information (like the "push" reports) in a shared location where people can get them where needed, or building a dashboard that is constantly updated. This last is ideal because the information is always up-to-date and no one has to sort through their emails to find that information.

Expectations are critical

I know that I'm unusual in how few notifications I get on my phone and desktop: I turn off every alert about incoming email to force me to only know if I have some if I open the app or program. So when I start with a new team, part of the conversation I have is my communications philosophy: what types of information need to be passed up and down the chain, how quickly, and the preferred channel. I try to be very clear about after-hours communications in particular: if someone receives an email, text, Teams message, phone call outside business hours, are they expected to respond? How quickly?

If someone operates differently, we can reach an accommodation, but if we don't set expectations then we'll just disappoint each other constantly.

Conclusion

I've operated with people with radically different preferred channels. One of my first bosses would walk to my desk with marked-up hard copies as his go-to method. Others preferred phone calls for almost everything. One int

ernal customer (different business unit installing our product on his aircraft) had the habit of instant-messaging me with inquires when any other customer would have had to call or email. And yes, managing by email is very common. As long as we're able to communicate effectively, not frustrating each other, and respecting time off work, then we're doing well.

If you have any comments, please reach out to me at blog@saprobst.com or this page is cross-posted at LinkedIn and you can leave a comment there.