For running remotely, using text to communicate can be a necessary evil of sorts. When you’re not face to face with a person, you can’t judge tone and the nuance of language as well (or at all). So any of your communications could go sideways at any time.
Also, sometimes ideas can be complicated. Especially if you’re working through complicated projects with someone, explaining it clearly over text can be tough. These are serious issues for those who work remotely.
Because of this, we have conventions for our day-to-day communication expectations. First, we all chat with each other at any time of the day. We treat it like dropping by their office, knocking on the door, and asking to have a word. I type, “Hey”. That’s it. If they’re in a meeting or hip-deep in something else, they can hit me a brb (be right back) and I know to give it a minute or two. If not, they’ll continue the dialog.
The nice thing about practice this is that it gives everyone the freedom to be available, but also to have some control in case they’re completely under water at the moment. These are basically rules of politeness.
Once these boundaries are established, this allows the communication standard to be completely horizontal. Everyone has the same access to me and to each other. We are not separated by walls and floors and an assistant on the outside of my office running interference. For our company running remotely, everyone has access to everyone and respects their time.
Even with even access, text can still be a lousy way to explain yourself. So we have a communication standard that if a thought takes more than a couple of sentences to explain, we punt directly to a video chat or phone call right then. Chat is for chat. If you need a conversation, use a different medium (phone or video).
The practice of keeping chat at the chat-level and escalating “conversations” to some other form of communication allows us to help prevent the misunderstandings that come from an exclusive use of text to get your ideas across.
These communication standards help support the beneficial parts of running remotely (even access), while still providing a hedge against the difficulty of getting complicated thoughts across to your colleagues on the other side.
