Discussion

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After studying this chapter, you will be able to

1 Identify the major digital media formats available for business messages, and list nine compositional modes used in digital media.

2 Describe the evolving role of email in business communication, and explain how to adapt the three-step writing process to email messages.

3 Identify the advantages and disadvantages of business messaging systems.

4 Explain why organizing website content is so challenging, and explain the concept of information architecture.

5 Explain how to adapt the three-step writing process to podcasting.

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COMMUNICATION CLOSE-UP AT Slack

slack.com

If there’s a business award for accidental success, Stewart Butterfield would surely be a leading contender for it. He has the unusual distinction of being the cofounder of two different video game companies that didn’t succeed at their original missions but wound up spinning off secondary software features that became massive business successes on their own. The first turned into the photo-sharing web service Flickr, which was once just a feature inside an online role-playing game.

After selling Flickr to Yahoo! for a tidy sum, Butterfield cofounded another video game company. Again, the game business didn’t work out, but he and his partners commercialized an instant messaging function the company had developed for internal use. That capability was expanded and became the Slack messaging system, and it is leading an upheaval in the world of business communication.

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Slack cofounder and CEO Stewart Butterfield guides the development of a workplace messaging system that thousands of companies are using to improve team communication.

REUTERS/Mike Blake/Files

Slack offers several communication and information-management tools, but at its heart it is a workplace messaging system. Teams can set up a variety of channels to manage communication on specific topics, and individuals can configure alerts to make sure they get the messages they need without getting flooded by messages they don’t (one of the banes of email). All communication is automatically archived, so it’s easy for everyone on a team to find information. A key feature that Butterfield promotes with Slack is transparency, in that communication threads are no longer lost or hidden in private email exchanges but out in the open for everyone on a team to see and share.

To understand the appeal of Slack, one needs to understand the love/hate relationship many business professionals have with email. Email is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget what a revolutionary and disruptive medium it once was. In a world where internal memos could take hours to deliver and external letters could take days, nearly instantaneous email changed business communication forever, and it remains a vital communication tool.

However, email has long suffered from a serious case of too-much-of-a-good-thing. Many professionals complain of drowning in a flood of messages, with some getting dozens or hundreds of messages a day—even as they miss vital information when colleagues neglect to include them in message threads. Moreover, email is poorly suited to some of the tasks people use it for, such as project management, collaboration, information management, and other processes that require group communication and shared information access.

A variety of technologies that aim to overcome the disadvantages of email have recently entered the market, from basic instant messaging to full-featured collaboration systems. But few have caught on as quickly as Slack. Within a year of its 2013 launch, Slack had a half million daily users in 60,000 teams around the world and laid claim to being the fastest-growing business app in history. Within two years, the service had more than 2 million active users. Some describe it as more than a mere communication tool, calling it a radical way to transform how they work.

For many business communicators, Slack is clearly filling an unmet need. A majority of customers report greater productivity, more transparency, improved team culture, easier access to information, and a reduced need for meetings. On average, users say it has cut email use in their organizations almost in half, and many say it has nearly eliminated email entirely. By enabling communication and collaboration in ways that support how today’s professionals want and need to work, Slack and other corporate messaging systems might finally be taming the dreaded email monster