Tool Tuesday: Slack

Slack was the fastest growing company to ever reach a $2B valuation and last year it raised its latest round at a valuation just over $5B. Why? Because it’s a truly amazing product to increase productivity. In fact, today, Slack was announced as #32 on Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative Companies list.

In my approximation, Slack has cut down our internal company emails by 30%, saving us multiple hours each week!

However, Slack is much more than “less emails” – The app creates a culture of open discussion and inspires collaboration.

Here are a few good examples of how our company uses slack to create together:

Do you have a first draft of a cover art or new mix of a song you need the team’s perspective on? By Slacking it, you are preventing multiple emails from flying back and forth – These opinions are better served in conversation form in slack.

Is the final cover or master ready to share with the team? This may not be an important enough asset to be worthy of an email notification, yet still imperative everybody sees or hears it. Slack it!

Got playlist or radio adds this week? Confirmed a big sync for your artist? Locked a release date for the new single? SLACK! SLACK! And you guessed it, SLACK!

Were sessions set-up worth letting the company know about? Is there a new must-see fan video? What about ticket count updates on a show? Once again, SLACK! SLACK! SLACK!

Slack is great for sharing information you want your company to be aware of, but is not worth interrupting their daily work flow.

Urgent information or conversations involving external partners are two types of communication which do not lend themselves to slack.

I typically open Slack after I have reviewed everything new in my inbox, and rarely miss out on critical information as a result of looking at it last.

Some of my favorite, creative use of Slack Channels we have at TH3RD BRAIN are:

#wins – Simply put, this is where we post our artists’ wins!

#triangles – One of our acknowledgement processes is intentions. Another one is triangles. Our company logo is two eyes and a brain – It also represents two individuals coming together to create a higher, different color result than either could create on their own (1+1 = 3). Giving a “triangle” to an individual is a way to acknowledge them for their hard work, brilliance, or generosity.

Closed artist channels, such as #teamthut – This is a great way to communicate with team members who work directly on a project or initiative. We use these locked channels to communicate information not relevant to the entire company. All of our artists have a public slack channel, and some have a private one for those who work on the project at the company.

If you’re new to slack, here is some additional advice for getting the most out of it:

Similar to any great process or tool, Slack has a learning process. It can take a couple months to become fully adopted as a primary communication tool, but it is well worth it. If you are your company’s leader, it may make most sense to have an operationally-minded person set-up the platform for your team. However, make sure you understand it so you can lead the charge using Slack to convey information so others follow – You can even put a post-it note on your desk to remind yourself to do so! Once you have it set-up, you can schedule short meetings at the one, two, and three month mark to monitor the progress of using Slack to collaborate and continue to refine the channels for optimal use. Slack away!