How We Communicate 

We talk a lot about communication at SKYCATCHFIRE. Improving communication by building apps and sites for our customers is essentially what we do. It’s a hot topic here and one that I love to talk about. It’s even one of our brand values.

Method matters

How we choose to communicate matters but we often forget that by communicating too quickly.

Phone
Urgent. Something is horribly wrong. Something is absolutely awesome.

SMS
Urgent. Something is wrong. Something is awesome. Needs to be seen sooner rather than later or it isn’t work related.

Slack
More important than whatever the recipient is working on at the moment. Your message is meant to interrupt and force a response.

Email
Important but the recipient can get to it next. It’s not more important than what they might be working on at the moment.

Be thoughtful and direct

In most cases, the sender should be spending more time preparing their first communication than the recipient spends initially responding. The sender’s responsibility is to form the ask in a way that provides the details the recipient needs to reply without them searching or asking for more clarity. This isn’t always possible but should always be the goal.

Context above all

Keep the conversation in context. Is it a Trello card? Use the card for the conversation. Is it an email already? Reply. Is it related to a Google Doc? Comment.

Thoughtful, contextual, and timely communication can result in a team that’s allowed to focus on their work. Improve team communication, improve the team.