
Use reacji to conduct simple and fun polls. Employees were asked to add the :evergreen_tree: emoji reaction to all messages that every new 18F employee should know. To solve this, they set up a simple system. That meant that the information in their handbook was sometimes outdated, which made it difficult for new employees to find the most up-to-date information. The team at 18F (an office set up by the US government to improve other agencies’ user experience) realized that while they were very good at documenting the things they learned in Slack, they weren’t necessarily documenting it in their internal handbook. This is easier to explain with an example. With a few tricks, you can turn emoji reactions into powerful tools that you can use to improve your daily workflow.Įmoji reactions can be used to categorize and share information. Using reacji is fun and straight-forward, but that doesn’t mean they won’t also help you with serious things, like saving time for you and your team. Now that you know what a reacji is, let’s check how you can use them to your benefit to save time and improve your team’s communication. And I am happy to report, we've never felt more buoyant, in spite of, gestures widely, all this.Your imagination is the limit: Slack’s custom emoji. With that little change, on top of the big changes, we've adapted quite nicely. It's a place where anything goes really and as such it provides a window into our souls we can't get by looking into each other's eyes. It's a place where we can share something we just learned. It has evolved into the place where we can share music, books, shows and movies that have our attention. It allows us a space to talk about our fears and concerns early on. That's when our culture really started to blossom. Then Nelli introduced a fourth section: What I am thinking about. Post gifs if you're feeling particularly expressive. When someone posts theirs, start a comment thread if you have ideas or questions. What I need help with is a place where you mention anything that might be a roadblock to your progress on your erstwhile successful completion of tasks.Ī couple of weeks in and everyone was now in the daily habit of doing stand-ups asynchronously. What I am depending on, is the place where you can make sure anyone who is in your critical path knows it. Under each of those is a bulleted list which we can see getting shorter throughout the week. It had a simple framework I had known from my years running agile teams: Right when we went virtual, I asked that everyone start posting their status daily. The best change was in our daily standups. It's also nice that you know what's happening in other parts of the business. We all get on for these meetings, even if you're not a part of the marketing team, it's nice that we get to see your face. Second, we committed to regular interval check-ins via Google Meet. Emails are fewer, which gives us more of a realtime side-by-side problem-solving we would have had in the office. Given our reliance on Slack, we started ramping up our communications on it. It generates those water cooler moments that we rely on for social cohesion. For a growing company, being present in person is a huge thing. The old adage, "culture beats strategy every time" has never rung more true than immediately after we shut down our office. I do want to highlight how our company has handled this massive change. That's a different post, by better students of tragedy. I don't want to gloss over the severity of the pandemic on people, businesses and institutions. And by now, if you're like me, you've become accustomed to it. Our systems, institutions and social contracts were all coming into question. Any sense of honky dory quickly shifted to helter skelter.

In short, all signs pointed toward a really fun year. Our product development was ahead of schedule. Our current clients were happy and themselves feeling buoyant. T the beginning of, gestures widely, all this, we had a little wind in our sails.
