Meet people in person!

I don’t have data to support this, but at very large companies it’s likely that a majority of the people we know we’ve never met in person. This is especially true with large cross-functional projects where people may reside in multiple buildings. We know so many people only through email, messaging, or a bug tracking system.

You might ask why this a problem. Text is often fraught with peril when it comes to communication. It’s easy to miscommunicate both ideas and emotions. It’s easy to misjudge someone or think ill of them. This could impact how a project progresses.

Here are some radical ideas you can try to implement.

Phone

If you find yourself communicating with someone very often via text and visiting them personally is difficult or not an option (e.g. they are in another country), pick up the phone and call them. In cases where you’re about to write a complicated email, perhaps you could save time just explaining over the phone and answering questions rather than having an endless …