Book Club 2&3/2025: Slack: Communication, Organization, Teams

24 March 2025 3 Minutes History Postgres Databases

On various aspects of teamwork, communication, and the like

So a bit ago I got shuffled around onto a new position, I am now the leader of the team responsible for PLPs, PDPs, and such item-related things at crateandbarrel.com. New team = new ideas, and being a remote worker throughout my whole career ideas about communication are particularly at the fore. My firm uses Slack to communicate, and I think Teams and other tools present a similar experience.

I've been reading a lot of disparate pieces about the functioning of teams, so my book club (for two months!) is a bit of a disjointed mess, but I think communication is the concept that ties it all together.

There's a lot of different ways to do communication, particularly over messaging platforms, and different situations call for different sorts of communication. How to create, manage, and structure various Slack channels seems like a critical skill; identifying communication patterns, shortcomings, and requirements can make or break a project. Here's a couple articles to do with Slack "architecture":

I've implemented Friday Slack demos to mixed success. I think colleagues enjoyed it but participation was spotty. When year-end reviews came around, those who participated more got more out of it. That practice is probably better for some teams and more mixed for others; definitely worth a try!

No doubt different practices work for different situations, teams, individuals. I've got a number of ideas having worked remotely for so long, but I haven't published them because my remote working practices seem so ... personal? Inapplicable to others. I might do yet though; the following have given me some interesting thoughts even though I don't think they apply universally:

And of course there's different styles of communication depending on the scenario or situation -

Some writing on general team practices -

And some writing on learning -

Last but not least, here are a few articles I've published generally on this mater:

That's really all I've got here; usually I use this book club as a way of developing, rounding out, and reinforcing ideas and practices that I've developed over my career, but I took a step back here to absorb. This is altogether a lighter, less set-in-stone sort of topic anywho. For those readers who live in the northern midwest US, I hope you're all enjoying seeing all the birds migrate back; I spotted my first egret of the year yesterday!