Writing

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

~ Socrates

During a coaching session today my coachee and myself talked about the importance of writing in the context of improving ones ability to communicate with your team in a written form.

In a remote world, communicating effectively has become more important than ever. A lot of newly remote companies usually use chat a lot with tools like Slack amongst others. Chat is a very tempting medium; it creates the illusion of closeness in a team.

The issue with chat is the ephemeral nature of the medium. It’s a great replacement of in person communication in the office when we don’t want (or can) to jump on a call, but it can also be very distracting when you want to concentrate on your work.

Problems arise when we want to communicate ideas or request feedback for an issue we are having.

I prefer long form writing to chat. When I have to spend a little more time to clarify my ideas (in my head and then in writing) I tend to be able to describe much better what I want to say. Long form writing, by it’s very nature, has a longer shelf life as well (whereas in chat, conversations get lost in time).

Do you and your team write long form? If not, why not? What other methods do you use to keep the knowledge of your remote team?