Chris Slemp

Transparency: Drop the Assumptions

Of all the values that drive teams to work differently, transparency has the most potential to transform your life and your business. Think of how hard it’s been historically to be truly transparent with enough of your fellow employees to make a real difference to how your organization thinks. You could send out a company-wideContinue reading “Transparency: Drop the Assumptions”

Urgency vs. Audience vs. Generation

One measure of the usefulness of a model is how extensible it becomes over time. It was therefore extremely gratifying to see last year that Wictor Wilen from Avanade was able to build on the same model introduced in 2015 to discuss the important factor of generational preferences. The assertion at the beginning of theContinue reading “Urgency vs. Audience vs. Generation”

Urgency vs Audience with Context

Richard and Kanwal from 2tolead had much larger ambitions in answering The Question, and they do so at length in their whitepaper: When to Use What in Office 365. I was initially trying to just answer that nagging question and help people get off the starting line with their adoption of new tools in the OfficeContinue reading “Urgency vs Audience with Context”

Urgency vs Audience

My original post on this topic has had several thousand views in the last 18 months. It seems to help people realize that there are simple ways to frame all the myriad ways that we have to collaborate. I’ll reproduce the post below in case, you know, Medium goes away or something. Originally posted on Medium, JanContinue reading “Urgency vs Audience”

There are models

“All models are wrong but some are useful.” – George Box. I have a confession: while this site is obviously now written from a point of view that believes our focus on “which tool when” is misplaced, that question is precisely where I started. Every model I came up with to answer this nagging question wasn’tContinue reading “There are models”

Better Questions

While I’ll admit it’s understandable that people ask which collaboration tool to use when, there are better questions to ask when deciding how you’re going to work together. There are two primary downfalls that arise from asking the “which tool when” question. ONE: It focuses on technology instead of people. Most collaboration tools are now benefiting from decadesContinue reading “Better Questions”

Fair Question

Which collaboration tool do I use when? It’s not an unreasonable question. Tools to improve our shared communication have been proliferating since the campfire. Wikipedia breaks them down into three main categories: those for communication (e.g. IM), collaboration (e.g. videoconferencing), and coordination (e.g. shared calendars and task management). Each of these categories continues to grow and evolveContinue reading “Fair Question”

Why I built this site

I’ve been asked many versions of the same question since I first started working in the communications & collaboration space in 2009. Which tool should I use when? What tool is best for my team? Which tool is best for <insert your communication goal>? Why do we need so many tools? Can’t there just beContinue reading “Why I built this site”