Stop Slacking, Start Working

Practical and easy rules of tools that help your organisation grow

The New Yorker recently published an article in the Cultural Comment sections, about the potential toxic downside of using communication tools like Slack. Under the title ‘Slack Is the Right Tool for the Wrong Way to Work’, Cal Newport, professor of computer science at Georgetown University, talks about his experience with a London startup that decided to switch communications to Slack. Of course very soon everything starts to go from bad to worse. Before the start-up knows what hit it, it ends in a overloaded, stressed out situation. And guess what, abandoning Slack is the only option left.

The article gets almost everything right, but it does misunderstand one thing: Slack is actually the right tool, for the right way to work. To be able to work in a right way, your organisation and its employees might need to create some rules. Rules that help navigate the communication jungle we live in today. Those rules will not only help you work in the right way to make Slack work. It will also help you to make all tools work for you.

Write down basic rules of tools

There are many tools that you can use for many different purposes. Make sure that you start with a simple list. Include the name of…