The Slack solution. Can it work in big organisations?
What does Slack solve? If like some you see email as the problem then Slack is one solution. The questions I want to ask; can Slack co-exist peacefully with email and move into big organisations? Or do they fight it out like Batman v Superman. I’ll let you guess which role email inhabits.
You set up a Slack group for a project, invite twenty people to join. Then one sneaks off, starts emailing others about the project. Worse, they email documents which should be shared over Slack. Does this undermine the Slack collaboration? I guess it does. Doing so goes against the very reasons you set up a Slack group in the first place.
What I am getting at is the ideological nature of some Slack’s supporters. Slack is on the up but is not without its discontents. It stands at the door of big organisations many of whom are still in wedded to email. What kind of environment is Slack entering. It’s one where
- Email is established but is being challenged
- Instant messenger is reducing the number of emails.
- Yammer or Outlook groups may have a foothold off the back of a Microsoft Office 365 presence
- Isolated use of Slack amongst teams within your organisation.
Slack can take root in an environment of 40 – 60 staff and take over. But I would argue that when Slack comes into a large organisation with tens of thousands of staff it will not dominate but have to peacefully co-exist with email and other forms of messaging and mailing. If you look at the Slack’s app ideas board under the tab ‘Universal use cases’ is this ‘Manage email from within Slack’
For Slack to gain traction within big organisations it will need to hook up with email. Sometimes opposites attract. This could be a happy relationship. The bigger questions for Slack; can it move into organisations with a large work force? time will tell but the signs are not great. Recently Slack broke up with Uber
“Recently, the ride-hailing service Uber dropped Slack because the service could not handle the thousands of Uber employees trying to communicate simultaneously, according to people who work at both companies.” (Guardian, April 4, 2016)
Slack is not a solution but one of the tools organisations can use to reduce email, encourage collaboration and hopefully get some work done.
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