Good morning,
If you’re not familiar with the “maker vs. manager” concept, I recommend this post from Farnam Street and this one from Paul Graham.
Almost all modern digital teams building something of value are composed of both makers and managers.
One of the consequences of the “suddenly remote” era of the past year was a focus on how to communicate: async vs. sync, chat vs. email, and video vs. conference call.
Unfortunately, this focus on the “how” was often at the expense of the “when.”
Managers need to respond quickly to issues and customers and treat tools like Slack or email as synchronous ones. Ad-hoc Zoom meetings happen all the time for them. Their notifications need to be on when they at work.
On the other hand, makers create value when they are in a flow state. An asynchronous approach to Slack and email is a must. Ad-hoc Zoom meetings are costly, only carefully scheduled ones will do. Their notifications need to be turned off most of the time.
In this article, Slack and Zoom Were Distracting Our Teams. Here’s How We Regained Focus, a Dallas PR firm leverages the maker vs. manager concept to create simple rules and fix their remote communication woes. It’s a quick read, and hopefully you can find something in their story to help you and your team.
Have a great weekend,
Henry