Avoid communication blasts
This bad habit has its roots in the fear of missing out; a.k.a. FOMO feeling that exists because you don’t see everyone in front of you. Many of us want the widest audience to see our messages - something that’s in common with our behaviour on social media. What if someone important, who we don’t know of yet, is to find something important about that message we’re about to send, but they won’t find it because they won’t receive the message? Oh boy! Isn’t that a reason to send the message to the largest group of people we can justify sending it to?
I know that thought process sounds ridiculous when I phrase it that way, but trust me, I’ve lived in that communication set up for several years of my consulting life. Your inbox and your instant messaging system become a total mess because you have all sorts of communication in it - whether it's directly useful to you or not. From birthday wishes, to event information, to congratulating people on making that big sale and more - everything’s in your inbox. And everyone else’s inbox. We need better etiquette when using communication tools such as email or IM.
“The etiquette about how we used these tools, what we used them for when we used them is very poorly understood compared to the fact that if you were in an office, imagine you’re in the middle of the workday there’s 200 people in this open office. You pull out your chair, you just stand on your chair, and you start clapping your hands, ‘Hey, everyone. What’s your opinion about this?’ People would look at you as though you were just bananas!” - David Heinemeier Hansson
David goes on to explain that a single line message that you send to 200 people isn’t a single line message anymore. It’s a 200-line message. To borrow one more of his phrases, we need to “shrink the blast radius”.
And of course, there are things you can do instead.
Target your message. Everyone doesn’t need to get every single message. It’s ok. The world will continue to exist if some people miss out. Direct your communication to the people who need to act on it. If you can’t name the right people, then you haven’t thought your message through properly.
Use opt-in channels. Many channels such as company mailing lists and team, or department IM groups have a captive audience. People can’t opt-out of these. Spamming such channels with a blast message is insensitive. If you really need to reach a large audience, choose an opt-in group, such as a community of interest. That way you know that people who’re members have chosen to receive broadly directed communication.
Communicate with kindness. Recognise that all communication is an interruption. People need to step away from what they’re doing to address a message or an IM. Be thoughtful about how and when you communicate. For example, do you really need to hit “Reply-all” on that email? If all you want to say is one word, such as “Congratulations!”, can you just use an emoji reaction instead and not generate notifications for everyone? Do you have to mention @all or @channel or @board or should you reserve these mentions only for emergencies? When everyone acts thoughtfully in their individual situations, the whole team or organisation benefits from a better communication system.