Is Slack the right tool for small business? It may not solve every problem but Slack for small business can help you build a culture of productivity.
We have all been trying to fix email for years. How many of these approaches have you tried?
- Inbox Zero: An empty email inbox was a moral victory.
- Email Bankruptcy: The nuclear option of deleting everything and starting over when the guilt became too much.
- OHIO method: An acronym for Only Handle It Once which demanded immediate decisions for every message.
- Four Ds: Delete; Delegate; Defer; and Do.
- Yesterbox technique: Focus only on yesterday’s mail to stop the bleeding.
- Inbox Infinity: The most zen of the email approaches preaches acceptance. Let the unread counter climb forever.
I admit that I wave between Inbox Zero (usually when I have a lot of time on a holiday or while watching baseball) and the OHIO method.
The reason that email takes up so much of our psyche is that it is inefficient!
There is a reason that teams that rely on efficiency and transparency, like customer support, use tools that improve upon the basic functionality of email. Because email sucks!
Ok, email has its place. At Endurance Learning we use it for our customer communication. It’s the tool that’s available universally so it makes the most sense. Insisting on something else would be like saying “Hey, we’re a WordPerfect shop!” Only those of you who’ve been around for a while will remember WordPerfect.
Email has it’s place but it is not a to do list. Read Getting Things Done for a healthy take on how to treat email.
The Limitations of Email for Business
Back in 2015 my partner Brian and I started Endurance Learning as a fully remote company. We had no choice. I was in Washington, DC and he was in the other Washington.
I never loved email because I struggled with how it was organized. I’ve tried every improvement but never found it to be an adequate work management tool. The biggest reason is that my memory can’t be depended upon. I would know that I saw something in an email chain and not be able to find it no matter who or what I searched for. The searches got better but I would argue that it is still easy to lose something in an email if you can’t remember exactly what the sender’s name is or the words they used in the email. Sound familiar?
The average interaction worker spends an estimated 28 percent of the workweek managing e-mail and nearly 20 percent looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. But when companies use social media internally, messages become content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35 percent, the time employees spend searching for company information. – The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey & Company
Brian knew my dislike for email and signed up for a tool called HipChat. I was excited that he was willing to try this tool but I really wanted to implement a tool I had just heard of called Slack. I was excited because it also offered some opportunities for integrations which I knew would become more important as we grew.
Email Creates Information Silos
The reality is that email is poorly organized for collaborative work. It creates silos where information is trapped in individual inboxes rather than being accessible to the group. When a new team member joins a project; they cannot easily see the history of decisions and discussions that happened before they arrived because that data is locked away in other people’s archives.
Email is Not Transparent
Email lacks transparency. To keep everyone in the loop you have to constantly remember to copy or forward messages to the right people. If you forget one person, they are completely cut out of the conversation. If you choose the mighty “Reply All”, email chains often clutter inboxes with information that is only relevant to a few. This causes email fatigue and ensuring that important updates get missed.
NOTE: Have you noticed that email programs are now summarizing email with AI? They are telling you that email is not efficient!
Email is Not Organized by Project
Email is rarely organized by project. It is organized by date, time, topic, and recipients, which means you might have a critical client update sandwiched between a newsletter subscription and a calendar invite. Searching for project-specific files or conversations becomes a tedious task of digging through a chronological pile rather than navigating a structured workspace.
Why Use Slack for Small Business
Our story of adopting Slack began with a desire to centralize our conversations. The primary strength of Slack lies in its organization by channel. Instead of a single stream of incoming messages; communication is compartmentalized into specific topics; teams; or projects.
Communication is Organized by Project
This structure allows us to use channels for everything. We have channels for specific client projects; channels for internal operations; and even channels for social chatter. This separation ensures that when you are working on a specific task; you can go to that channel and find all the relevant context in one place without being distracted by unrelated noise.
Centralize Notifications
Our channels for IT issues and system statuses help us consolidate messaging. If a major product we use has an outage, a teammate can post it here and everyone who might need to know can see it.
We like to automate as many of these as possible. For example, for systems status updates we convert email alerts to Slack notifications through a simple automation.
Processing Information on Your Schedule
Crucially; this system lets users find information when they are ready to process that project. You do not have to react to every message the moment it arrives. You can check the marketing channel when you are ready to work on marketing; and check the finance channel when you are dealing with expenses. The information is there waiting for you; organized and accessible.
“Deep work is the ability to concentrate on a task without any distractions. It allows you to overcome challenges, master new skills more quickly, and produce better results in less time.” – Deep Work by Cal Newport
Integrations
Slack is such a common tool that there are many standard integrations. My only caution is to think about how these integrations lead to notifications. We chose to use more custom automations in place of standard integrations because we wanted to respect the flow of work.
Easy Access to Documents
One of my biggest gripes with email is losing links to important documents. In Slack; you can pin critical resources to the top of any channel so they are always one click away. We use the bookmarks at the top of a challenge to link to:
- Style Guides
- Project Folders in Google
- Trello Boards
- Project Schedules
- Running Notes for a Client
Tip: While not specific to Slack, I encourage you to have a “Running Notes” document for every opportunity, client, project, etc. These documents become the source of truth for conversations and you’ll never have to look around for where you took notes or where a meeting is recorded.
By pinning these tools to the relevant project channel the team never has to ask “where is that file?” again. It creates a persistent source of truth that lives right alongside the conversation about the work.
Automations
You can also save hours of manual data entry by automating workflows between apps. For instance; we use Zapier and n8n to connect our various software platforms. An example is our heavily used integration between Airtable and Slack. We use Airtable for project management. When a task is complete and ready for the next person, they are tagged in a message in the appropriate channel in Slack. Most integrations with standard work management tools will DM the person. We like every communication to be visible in the project channel so nobody has to ask if the person was notified.
Best Practices With Slack for Small Business
I’ve had several small businesses come to me because they heard that they should use Slack. You would think from what I’ve written that I would be the biggest advocate for implementing Slack. But Slack is not a magic bullet. Like any software implementation, Slack will fail your business if your implementation is not intentional. In fact, it can be worse than what I’ve described with email!
To make Slack work for your team; you need to establish clear norms. It is not enough to just install the software; you must agree on how to use it.
Establish a Slack Channel Structure
Keep your channels tidy. Archive channels that are no longer active to prevent clutter. Use consistent naming conventions so that anyone can look at the list and understand where to go for specific information.
We’ve adjusted this over the years but for our business it makes the most sense to organize by customer and project number.
Agree on Rules of Engagement
Establish simple rules for engagement that everyone uses and everyone understands. This will reduce cognitive load.
For example; use reactions to acknowledge messages.
A thumbs up can signify “I saw this;” while a check mark might mean “I have completed this task.” This reduces the need for cluttering the channel with “got it” or “ok” messages.
There are two levels to this. Giving an indication that you read something and know that it needs to be addresses is step 1. You may not be able to do the task in the next few hours and now the other person is not wondering if you saw it or if it got missed.
Tagging should be used sparingly. Only tag a person or a group when they absolutely need to be notified right now. Over-tagging leads to notification fatigue; which causes people to ignore alerts altogether.
The bottom line is that you should always be documenting in Slack to help the next person or yourself take action when you’re ready. Your productivity will improve when everyone using Slack is documenting for retrieval, not storage.
Limit Slack Notifications
We highly recommend agreeing not to have alerts on for most messages. By default, Slack notifies you of everything, but you should change this. You can set your preferences to only notify you when you are directly mentioned or when key words are used.
I admit that I haven’t convinced my entire team to turn off notifications yet, but it is a goal worth pursuing. Constant pinging breaks focus.
Using Slack on Smart Phones
Avoid using Slack on your phone; or at least do not have notifications enabled on your mobile device. There are not that many emergencies in most of our work that require immediate attention after hours. Disconnecting is vital for long-term productivity and preventing burnout.
And it leads to accidentally reading messages when you’re not ready to take action. Imagine you’re out for a walk and listening to a great podcast about how to grow your small business and you get a notification and pull out your phone. It may not be important. It may not be for you. And yet it just distracted you from thinking about strategy and enjoying some time away from your work.
Slack Tip: Use the “Remind me about this” feature to add it to a list and get a reminder.
The Hidden Traps of Slack
I’m a big believer that work gets done when the information that you want is available to you when you need it. Slack should be that place where you go in between work tasks. It is not the work itself.
The Hidden Silos of Direct Messages
A common pitfall occurs when direct messages (DMs) are used instead of project channels. When conversations happen in DMs the transparency benefit of Slack is lost. Decisions are made in private and the rest of the team remains unaware. This brings back the silos that we tried to escape by leaving email.
The Text Messaging Trap
Slack not only fails as a replacement for email but will likely make your workplace worse when it becomes the same as text messaging. If the expectation is immediate response to every ping, your team productivity will likely plummet. It transforms from an asynchronous tool into a constant source of interruption that demands your attention every few minutes, preventing deep work.
Summary
Moving your team from email to Slack is a significant cultural shift that requires more than just a software download. It requires a commitment to transparency, organization, and respecting each other’s time.
When done correctly, you break down information silos and create a searchable, organized history of your business. When done poorly, you simply replace a cluttered inbox with a noisy chat room. Start with clear norms and put time and energy into having a clear and organized workspace. The efficiency you gain is well worth the effort.
