This one is an interesting link. It’s not to an article, but rather to a response to a response. Jason Fried wrote about why Basecamp does not conduct status meetings, then followed up on several responses to his post. This one stuck out to me, as he followed up to a person who stated, “Some of us just are not that good at writing stuff down.”
His reply:
It’s worth working on becoming a better writer. So much communication these days is written. It doesn’t matter if it’s chat or longform — if you can’t communicate through the written word you’re at a major disadvantage.
I couldn’t agree more. Working remotely for 7 years has taught me the importance of being able to articulate my thoughts in written form (and I still need so much improvement). The benefits of writing are myriad.
The sentiment expressed above is a form of laziness; whether in a remote team or not, most teams can benefit from team members taking some time to hone their thoughts. That’s part of the issue of meetings: it’s easy to throw out any thought that come to mind, regardless of how valuable or unformed it is. The process of putting these thoughts to “paper” results in better contributions.
