I’ve been toying with creating a communication protocol for my projects. I would hand it to my Architect so they would be liberated from thinking about how to communicate so they can focus on what to say.
Online
Non Urgent Items go onto an Online Taskboard (to be be discussed in a weekly one-on-one meeting between the Owner and Architect).
Yes / No quickies can be handled in Email.
Anything you send to someone that isn’t under your contract should CC: me. I’m not worried about being buried under emails. If I’m not in the salutation, I’ll scan it and file it away quietly when I get around to it.
Telephone
Use Phone Calls liberally. If an email exchange might ping-pong more than three times, then pick up the phone. Make sure to document the conversation with a follow up email.
Don’t bother with voicemail. I never check those.
If it’s really urgent, Text me. Or call my cell twice in a row.
Meetings
Videoconference preferred to save on travel time.
All Meetings should have an Agenda prepared X days in advance and Minutes distributed within Y days. (This is painful on purpose, to ensure the benefits of the meeting matches the cost).
A great meeting has three key elements: the desired outcome of the meeting is clear ahead of time; the various options are clear, ideally ahead of time; and the roles of the participants are clear at the time. … I think that’s the single largest source of optimization for a company: the makeup of their meetings. To be clear, it’s not about fewer meetings because meetings serve a purpose. Rather, it’s key to improve the meetings, themselves. A lot of my efforts focus on teaching people this framework. Ironically, I find that most people are just challenged by that stuff.
Spotify Founder and CEO Daniel Ek
Links
I read these four examples a year ago and haven’t referenced them, but they have been fermenting in my brain. They links are sorted by alphabetical order of the company, but do the kids say these days? Retweet is not endorsement.
Expectations (Automattic, Inc)
The Basecamp Guide to Internal Communications
The 10 Slack Agreements of Buffer
Gitlab Handbook, Communication
I started in a small office, hand drafting with a telephone, using dial-in internet. Less than twenty years later, I have a cellphone and a computer, both of which have high speed internet and instantaneous access to email and MS Teams.
When we talk about progress, its easy to forget that the world that we saw slowly changed in real time is just the basic “normal” for those who grew up after the technology became widespread. These younger folks grew up in a totally divergent communication environment, and I believe that a communication handbook may be the best way to bridge the divide, even if it seems stodgy as hell.