Any collective is just a mass of unproductive idiots if they can’t even communicate well. Don’t blame it on anyone; you deserve this title no matter what role you had.

This is not to be debated. If you don’t agree, meet me at the parking lot; we can fight.

How to communicate productively?

That’s the question, and one that must be solved. It is very important to communicate well, whether remotely, in writing, or verbally, in a workspace. Just remember:

A well-communicating team is an organized team.
A well-communicating team is an effective team.
A well-communicating team is a collaborative team.
A well-communicating team is a productive team.

According to American Public University, good communication is pivotal in constructing healthy relationships and progressing towards a common goal both personally and collectively, while also mediating conflicts. Additionally, contrary to popular belief, conflicts aren’t always two individuals throwing fists at each other (which is usually caused by, you guessed it, a communication flaw). Instead, it is more of a clash of ideas that are, in their healthy nature, completely resolvable in a friendly, easygoing manner.

But to be able to communicate productively first, you must be able to communicate effectively beforehand. Pick anyone from the street; they will agree.

Effective Communication Digitally#

I’m personally a strong victim of this, so I’m going to rant about it.

To be able to communicate effectively is to be able to communicate when required and without significant obstacles. You don’t have to care about what’s being communicated; you can’t make somebody aware of something if you can’t even talk with them.

Of course, if you are communicating verbally, the air is your medium – mechanical waves around us – so you naturally won’t have problems with it. However, if your recipient is deaf or grappling with some kind of disability (which we shall definitely not discriminate against), you’ll either need to learn sign language or find other means to communicate. (Modern accessibility technologies should make this very straightforward.)

Communicating verbally is all you need if you are living four decades ago. (Of course, you may as well write mail or send Morse code.) The problem is, we are living in the twenty-first century, so we have more options.

A majority of modern collectives and organizations all have the strong tendency to have some means of remote, digital communication nowadays. Be it used on a phone, a laptop, or a watch, a platform must be used to communicate digitally, say email or Google Chat.

The means of digital communication are, unsurprisingly now, a huge accelerator of productivity – being able to communicate at a distance at lightning speed is much faster than horsepower, massively reducing the time and cost of communication as compared to our grandparents. It’s the dream of digital nomads! At the same time, however, they are also prone to some stupid errors in decision – some platforms are ostensibly not really built to be great tools for teams, especially small ones.

So, what’s the criteria to check if your choice of platform is OK?

  1. The platform must be accessible. That does not just mean language accessible or user-friendly enough to be used by your communicators. It also means to be able to be consistently used on most devices, say, not just phones, but also laptops and desktops. The more the better, and the easier it is to contact others in a timely fashion.

  2. The platform must be reliable. Simply put, if the platform fails to deliver a message in its full integrity less than 99% of the time without the sender knowing or requiring complex/unnecessarily repetitive extraction methods, then this criterion fails.

  3. The platform must be downright available. This means without having your users spend a significant effort or time accessing the platform under common conditions. That includes regional restrictions or overheads: do not force your good members working from China or India to use Google Chat or WhatsApp™ – they’re banned; blame the PRC or whatnot.

As long as these criteria are met, then your platform is well chosen. Perhaps, you’d also like it to be secure. Let’s explore some case studies!

Case 1: Four-Person Film Project.#

There was a film assignment, and the four good friends living in Singapore gathered and decided to settle their camp on Google Chat.

Let’s use the framework to evaluate this decision.

Google Chat is accessible in this because teens nowadays could never be so technologically illiterate as to not even know how to use conventional chatting software like Google Chat. If they actually don’t know, it’s still not hard to pick up. Additionally, Google Chat can be used on a phone and on a laptop with no signs of inclination. Both of them may be logged in with an email and a password. Accessible? Check.

Google makes damn sure that their services never experience a downtime. (Like, actually, put it on moms if you ever encountered a Gmail maintenance.) They are also very version compatible – they don’t often have annoying updates, and you can get away without one. Reliable? Check.

Although Google’s services are banned in some regions, it is unlikely that the group will have to use the service from any of the restricted locations during the duration of the project. Available? Check.

The four good friends get an A!

Case 2: Bin Project#

A group of aspiring high schoolers (mostly seniors) decided to put cameras above campus food bins to track what food is the most disliked with the hope of reducing carbon emissions. They decided to talk with each other on WhatsApp. Is this a good decision?

WhatsApp is definitely usable by high schoolers, no doubt. However, WhatsApp is highly inclined towards phone users. Even though WhatsApp does have a laptop or desktop client (with a sufficient range of OS support), it often requires the presence of a phone to log in – you do it by scanning a QR code with the phone client. Once you do, it will maintain its session for an uncertain length of time that is definitely no longer than a month and will spontaneously log out with no warning whatsoever, essentially making the desktop version not consistently usable without the presence of the user’s phone. Fail, but not utterly.

Somebody just had to miss a meeting because they couldn’t log into WhatsApp on their laptop and their phone is dead. The lead blames it on that person, but remember? Your choice of the platform affects all members in your relationship, and in the end, its drawbacks will come back to you. Everybody’s the idiot here.

WhatsApp sure sounds reliable, right? Downtime is sure rare, and they keep their data safe – though they did have a leak in 2022. Not sure about that.

The team gets a C-plus... for – the world would like to “C” you doing better.

You have to respect their hustle for the environment, though, although some are likely doing it just to get into some Ivy Leagues.

Case 3: Chinese Law Firm#

A Chinese law firm with lots of people and employees decided to settle on the traditional email, with occasional uses of WeChat™ – a very popular Chinese app similar to WhatsApp – for the less formal or timely business.

Old School! But good enough? Let’s remember our framework – Accessible? Reliable? Available?

Let’s look at Email first.

E-mail is great in terms of accessibility – it works without dependence on any specific client: you can use Outlook, Gmail, heck, even Elm, and as long as the network works, it will work. The UI-language of popular email clients is easily customizable to one’s liking, and the email networking is also much more distributed: there is no specific client that you must use but a network protocol that the client supports and, if self-hosted, a server. Therefore, there is no natural inclination on any device, and most clients support both mobile and non-mobile, so this is an excellent choice in terms of accessibility.

If the firm relies on an Email service – say Gmail, or something else, possibly branded by the firm – then the reliability of Email will depend on the uptime, security, and proper configuration of the service. If the firm finds it worth it to completely self-host it, then they will be even more liable to maintain this operability. The more independent this is to some already established service, the more likely anything unexpected is to happen, although a proper, responsible, well-paid IT department should be able to address any failures lest they happen. Reliability, therefore, will rely on some responsibilities.

Lastly, availability. E-mail, as long as it’s hosted on the World Wide Web, is easily available, unless the firm is adopting a service, notably Gmail and others, that may be restricted in some areas, affecting particular members. This may be addressed using a non-restricted service if it happens to bother the firm, say Microsoft Outlook, or self-host one. Passed.

Remark though: self-hosting will involve a periodic budget.

Using email for business affairs is a great choice; just make sure to check it often.

WeChat supports multiple language, and using it is very straightforward. It is also feature-rich with the ability to make group video calls and has never had a major downtime.

WeChat is like WhatsApp. Logging in will require the use of a phone, but, in addition to that, it has even shorter session times, so it is heavily inclined towards mobile devices, even beyond WhatsApp. It also features a ton of distractions as a social media platform, as well as countless expandable features, including but not limited to in-app programs, “Moments” – basically Instagram™ between your friends – and others. So, to that, I don’t really recommend it.

To make things even worse, the service behind WeChat does not even store the messages users send – that are all stored in the users’ devices. New members of group chats can’t even access previous chat histories; pictures and attachment won’t be accessible after a few day unless a user viewed and thereby downloaded it. Terrible.

Luckily, the firm plans to rely on email for more affairs, and in case WeChat fails, they can also fall back to email. The firm gets a B, for Better.

Case 4: Discord for Game dev#

A small team from Strange Scaffold is the author of the indie story game Bass Reeves Can’t Die, as documented by Noodle. (Strange Scaffold also made I Am Your Beast – breath-taking action game.) The team, under pressure, used trusty Discord; with the team fully remote, how they plan to organize themselves is a crucial determinant to the extent of their productivity.

Discord is feature-packed, not all that hard to use, and language-accessible. It’s mainly used on the desk, but it also supports mobile users: no nasty QR-code log in as the only option. Furthermore, geared with features including voice chat, channels, roles, attachments, and fully recoverable chat histories, Discord is well-prepped for the fully remote.

Discord is also very established, hence reliable – minimal downtime and outage. It is, however, restricted in some countries, but that doesn’t affect Strange Scaffold – at least not for now.

Discord did not paid me. Strange Scaffold gets an A-minus. Well-done.

Conclusion#

Your choice of platform affects how well your team performs.

Follow the rules:

  1. Accessible;
  2. Reliable;
  3. Available.