Ryan NisbetOperations, Delphi · Operations at Delphi

Why Slack is Killing Your Company's Communication

5 May 2026 · 1 min

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1:17

In this monologue, the speaker argues that Slack has shifted the communication paradigm to a "post‑and‑done" model, where the sender feels their job is finished once a message is posted, and the onus is placed on everyone else to read it. The speaker contends that true communication responsibility lies with the sender until the recipient actually receives and understands the message. To illustrate this, he recounts a lesson from a Hall‑of‑Fame Stanford basketball coach: a pass isn’t complete until the receiver catches it. By reframing communication this way, the speaker suggests that many excuses about missed messages are misplaced, and that organizations should view communication as an ongoing transfer of information rather than a one‑way broadcast.

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Okay, so I can actually distill this pretty quickly. Slack changes the paradigm, and I'll actually make, turn this into a basketball metaphor, but Slack changes this, the paradigm of communication to my responsibility is to post something and everybody else has to read it. And I feel like I've done my job if I've posted something into Slack. Communication though is about the person receiving, in my view. Like if I say something to you, but it doesn't make any sense, I have not done my job communicating. So I learned this in basketball. Actually, we had a coach at Stanford back when I was in college. He's a very good basketball coach. He's in the Basketball Hall of Fame now. And he had this concept he would teach his players, which sounds fundamental, sounds rudimentary, but it's actually really brilliant. It's like your job when you pass the ball is not ended until the recipient successfully catches the pass. By reframing it that way, all these excuses kick in and back for the people in basketball is like, oh, well, I threw him this pass, but he fumbled it. Or, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He should have caught it. He's like, no, it's, you have the ball, you, you have correct possession of it until it's transferred successfully. It's your problem. So I think communication is that.