I think one of the main reasons that Simply Binary is able to punch above its weight class comes from being able to fully leverage asynchronous communication in Slack. One of my favorite things about working at SB is being able to assume many different roles. The opportunities to learn and the variety of problems are some of the main reasons that I chose a small business, and a big reason why I’ve enjoyed it so much here! In my experience, most of the hardship of switching roles often hasn’t been from the cognitive difficulty, but actually the communication and collaboration that each role requires. For instance at SB, it’s not uncommon to have several asynchronous conversations for separate roles directed at the same person in parallel. Depending on your preferred working style, this could sound stress-inducing or exhausting, but at SB we have it down to a science, which I think is a big reason why we can work in a number of different capacities without it being overwhelming, time-consuming or unsustainable. This comes from one simple practice: creating separate channels for each role on a project. While this could be unnecessary for lower priority or slower-moving projects, at SB we intentionally name channels by “#project-role” which gives us several key benefits:
This reduces the amount of cognitive context switching that occurs by keeping conversations in their respective frames
All team members acting in the same role can fully engage on items equally
We can keep a clear history of activities for roles and keep notification fatigue to a minimum
With this method and organized process management, I think this is one of the main reasons why we’ve been able to efficiently and effectively drive software development on Slipstream with an incredibly lean team. I was introduced to this concept through Cal Newport’s podcast and his books such as Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, of which several of us at SB are big fans. So thank you Cal, they’ve been working great! Have you organized your asynchronous communications like this? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!
Also, if you’re interested in more productivity-focused content, please check out https://www.systemlevelthinking.com/ by Simply Binary’s very own Pete Broderick!
