About six years ago, I led a project to introduce Slack within my company. At that time, I researched how companies that were already using Slack successfully operated, looked into operational rules established overseas, and obsessively studied Slack's own features and design philosophy.
Currently, I work with people from various companies, and looking at different organizations, I've realized that the points where I think, "Please, just follow this one thing," are almost universal, regardless of the industry or scale.
So, this time, I've summarized five points regarding chat tools in general that, if known, make communication pleasant—or conversely, if ignored, make things really difficult.
Principle 1: Do All Work in Public Channels
First. Communicate in places where anyone can see. This is the grand principle.
Unless it's a sensitive topic like HR, I believe that the use of Direct Messages (DMs) or private channels should, in principle, be prohibited.
When we introduced it, as expected, this objection came up: "Won't people from other departments see our exchanges?"
At that time, my response was a question: "Wait, are you usually engaging in communication that would be a problem if others saw it?"
(Looking back, that was a pretty snarky question.)
If it's communication to move work forward, there should be no problem regardless of who is watching. There's no need to sneak around or keep things secret within the company. Unless it's a listed company, there's no insider information, so if being seen is a problem, you should question the nature of that communication in the first place.
Everyone does all work exchanges on public channels that can be viewed by searching. This is the first principle.
So why is this necessary? There are three reasons.
Reason 1: Eliminating Information Gaps
It's not good when only people in high positions or veterans have information. In email-centric companies, mailing lists are created for each department, but people not on the list can't see them at all.
Additionally, with emails like Gmail, you generally can't see exchanges from before you joined. Past context doesn't drop into a new person's mailbox. As a result, people repeatedly say things like, "Actually, there was this discussion before," after the fact. This is just inefficient.
On the other hand, with Slack, you can normally find information exchanged before you joined by searching. New members can go back through the logs themselves to understand the background. This is huge for eliminating information gaps.
I wrote about my fury regarding this situation in the note below.
https://x.com/ysk_motoyama/status/2056673858409885990
Reason 2: Requests Become Less Sloppy
This is something I felt immediately after the introduction. When everyone stands on the premise of "being watched by an unspecified number of people," the writing of requests becomes noticeably more polite. Background, purpose, image of the output, deadline. They start writing these things.
It's like how even at a red light, if you think "God is watching. I'm watching, and I'm watching myself!!" you can wait until it turns green.
https://x.com/conan_app/status/1473126149781921793
The moment we switched from email to Slack, everyone seemed to start thinking "God is watching," and request sentences became much more polite.
And the side that responds to the request also replies politely. Others see that and learn, "Oh, if I ask like this, it seems easy to answer." Collective rules and manners are formed naturally. This secondary effect is quite significant.
Reason 3: Visibility of Who Has Which Ball
This is also often overlooked but quite important.
With email, one-on-one exchanges like "Can you do this?" happen without you knowing, even if they're sent to your team members. If you're not in the CC, you won't notice.
As a result, situations occur where members are about to burn out with tasks more than you realized. Managers lose track of who is asking whom for what, and what kind of exchanges are progressing between whom.
If you use public channels in Slack, all of this is visible. You can see, "Oh, he's handling that matter too right now," so casual requests decrease. This alone brings things closer to a healthy state.
Principle 2: Use Mentions "Thoughtfully"
Second. Use mentions while actually using your brain. This is really important.
There are roughly two types of Slack mentions: one like @channel or @here that sends notifications to everyone, and another that sends a notification to an individual like "Mr./Ms. XX."
Stop abusing @channel, seriously.
This was a point I truly couldn't forgive. @channel is the highest urgency mention in Slack. It sends notifications not just to people online, but also to people offline—meaning people who don't have Slack open or are off that day.
In other words, using @channel is, in short, like saying, "I don't care if you're on vacation, everyone, drop everything else right now and read this immediately!" That's the nuance. Without a doubt.
However, there are always a certain number of people in every organization who abuse this. Trivial contacts, content that doesn't matter whether you know it or not, notifications that are sufficient if only a few people know. They start posting those with @channel in a channel with about 100 people. This is truly a nuisance.
Why is it a nuisance?
First, unnecessary notifications fly in. Especially when an @channel notification comes on a day off, it really makes you jump. You think, "Is it a major incident?" and when you open it, it's a truly trivial contact. It's really, really bad for the heart.
Second, and what I think is most problematic, is that once someone starts repeatedly using @channel, others start imitating them.
It spreads through the atmosphere: "If that person is doing it, it's okay to use it for this much." Before you know it, you're in a state where @channel flies in every day.
When that happens, humans start thinking, "It's probably another low-priority message anyway," and gradually stop looking. Even if one piece of truly critical information is mixed in among 10 abused @channel notifications, you won't notice it.
This is the situation that must be avoided. Just like the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, as the frequency increases, the messages that should be conveyed no longer reach.
https://x.com/SaltyDo20334047/status/1761604941247070272
@channel should originally only be used for urgent and major events on the level of "a system failure has occurred" or "there is an important change affecting all employees." It's not something to be used with the same vibe as putting someone in the CC of an email.
Three Months of Guerrilla-style "Is That Urgent?" Stamp Spreading
When we first introduced it, these @channel abusers appeared in full force. Especially the type of person who wants everyone to "Look at my post!" was hitting @channel every day.
So, what our project team did was a guerrilla-style stamp movement.
We created a custom Slack stamp that said "Is that urgent? (?)" with a clearly provocative intent. And for any @channel post that was clearly not urgent, we pressed that stamp relentlessly.
Naturally, there was pushback. We got complaints from several people, and sometimes the supervisor of the person who was stamped would complain, saying "I want you to stop that." At worst, I was publicly called out in a channel with about 100 people, being told "I think pressing this kind of stamp is really not good."
To be honest, I think I was thoroughly disliked.
However, frankly, it didn't matter. Since this was a project we started after aligning with the management on the philosophy of "this is how we will operate," it was necessary to instill the correct use of @channel no matter what. Under the command of the management, a professional rank-and-file employee's job is to make it happen by any means as long as it's not illegal. We were to exterminate every single non-urgent @channel.
So, in a mood of becoming a sort of psychopath, regardless of whose post it was or what position the person held, I continued to relentlessly press the "Is that urgent?" stamp. I did this for about three months.
As a result, we were able to successfully exterminate them. The world where non-urgent @channel mentions were gone was a peaceful space wrapped in silence. Trivial information didn't come in; only necessary information did.
I learned then that changing a culture requires steadily continuing this kind of guerrilla activity.
Don't Hesitate to Use Individual Mentions
While the talk about @channel got long, on the other hand, please don't hesitate to use mentions for individuals.
This is what you use when making a request. When asking Person A for something, you mention Person A. You don't need to think, "I'll be considerate and leave out the mention"; rather, if you don't include it, it won't appear in their notifications, so there's a possibility it won't be read for a long time.
You want some kind of reaction from the other party, you want approval, or you want them to read it no matter what. In these cases, don't hesitate to use a mention.
As a side note, some people add "san" (Mr./Ms.) after a mention.
@yusuke.motoyama-san, thank you for your hard work.
Writing like this. Honestly, it's really unnecessary. Since the Slack mention itself already includes the person's name, adding "san" after it is a double expression.
Especially when contacting someone important, some people feel the need to add "san" or "sama." I understand the feeling, but doing that makes it the same as email. The speed of Slack is lost all at once.
You don't need "san" after a mention.
If you decide on rules at this level of granularity and set out to correct them at the beginning, you'll get much closer to a comfortable communication space.
Principle 3: Send When You Want, Read When You Want
If you'd like to read further, please check out the note below.
