No, I don't want to hop on a call

I do not want to hop on a call because you are too lazy to write a cogent message

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Read time: 8 minutes

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Your colleague asks you a reasonable question.

You could take 5 minutes to write a cogent reply. You have everything you need to reply well. Multiple teammates would benefit from reading your reply.

But instead, you say, “Let’s hop on a call.”

When you say this, sometimes what you really mean is: “I don’t want to do the work of clarifying my own thinking. And I believe it’ll be easier to think out loud and answer in a live conversation.”

My response to you is:

I do not want to hop on a call because you are too lazy to write a cogent message.

If you don’t want to invest 10 minutes to write a reply to a reasonable question, why should I listen (with no 1.5x button) as you meander in real time? GTFO.

There’s nothing “just” about “just hopping on a call.”

Here are two scenarios:

Option A:

• You take 10 min to draft a useful reply.

• Your audience takes a few minutes to read, one person asks a follow-up question, but everyone is otherwise satisfied.

• They give you a thumbs up.

• You move forward.

-> This takes 20 minutes total. It might feel like more work upfront, but the investment pays off.

Option B:

• You aren’t sure how to explain your idea, but you think it’ll be easier to explain on a call.

• You ask Joe and Sue to hop on a call.

• You, Joe, and Sue hop on a call for 30 minutes. Now this is 1.5 manhours spread across three people. And most of that time was you figuring out how to explain what you wanted to say, with too much backstory and the wrong type of detail.

• At the end of the meeting, one of you still needs to draft an answer for the rest of your team to read.

-> This takes 2 hours. You avoided thinking upfront, so you had to “pay” for this (with interest) later through multiple back-and-forths.

You might have saved yourself a bit of time upfront, but net-net it took more time for everyone else. This is selfish. Do not be selfish.

The kicker is the real cost isn't only about time—it's also about how you are perceived.

How power dynamics come into play

A senior executive might default to hopping on a call so they can share their thoughts out loud quickly.

This makes sense. They are genuinely time-constrained, and more importantly, they can “get away with” thinking out loud while others listen. Even if they ramble, they are not likely to be punished for it.

But if you are a senior IC or senior manager, you do not have this luxury.

Folks around you are less likely to be as forgiving. If you force cross-functional team members to listen to verbal vomit, they will think you are scatter-brained. They will think you are not in control of your work. “Does this person know what they’re doing? This seems like a simple question, but they’re not able to give a straightforward answer.”

It can negatively impact their perception of you. This is a shame because if you had thought about their question for an extra beat, you would likely have been able to write a great reply.

You can’t avoid thinking

You can’t escape the work of thinking. As a knowledge worker, you are paid for your good judgment.

The thinking has to happen sometime, either before you answer in Slack or before you answer on a call.

If you can’t figure out how to write an answer, you will arrive at the meeting and FORCE everyone to listen as you figure it out.

To be clear, I’m not against thinking out loud. There’s a time and place for brainstorming. And it’s normal to riff out loud if you get a question you weren’t expecting when you’re in a meeting.

What I’m talking about is thinking there’s a need to “discuss” a topic in real time, when you don’t actually want or need a discussion. What you are actually doing is sharing half-baked thoughts in the more forgiving medium of speech (vs writing).

Common excuses that sound legit on the surface

Excuse #1: “We need to hop on a call to discuss.”

See above. Many times when we say we want to hop on a call, there might be a subconscious element of worry: “I don't want to say something and be wrong. I'd rather discuss it in the safety of a group setting, where no one in particular is accountable and we all share ideas.”

This is a valid concern. The solution, though, isn’t to hop on a call. The solution is to answer accurately. Don’t overstate your confidence. Don’t say something like it’s a fact when it’s a hypothesis.

You can speak both confidently and accurately. One of my go-to phrases for doing this is to say: “My initial thinking is ___ because ___.”

Excuse #2: “I wouldn’t want to force my audience to read a long Slack message.”

In my course, I show screenshots of some longer Slack messages. In every cohort, I inevitably get one student who asks,

“This Slack message seems long. Would it be better to share this on a call?”

This is not a good reason to hop on a call.

Being concise is not about simply being brief. Just because a message has more than a few lines of text, does not mean it is “too long.” I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a message that’s “too short” or “too long” without knowing the context of what’s being discussed and the quality of the content.

Also, if an answer really is “too long” for Slack, here’s something most people don’t realize: It takes more time for your recipient to listen than it takes them to read.

People generally read faster than they listen. People can read at their own pace. They can reread key parts to boost their comprehension. But they can only listen to you at one pace. So your recipient actually has less control when listening to you speak than when reading a written message.

So if you think the Slack message is “too long” for your recipient, it could well be “too long” for them to listen to. Your recipient won’t suddenly have a longer attention span because you’re sharing live.

In fact, they might be less patient because you insisted on having a meeting, so whatever you’re sharing better be well-organized to make good use of their time.

It can only be well-organized if you prepare for the meeting—just like you would have prepared an answer in writing.

Thus, you can’t avoid the preparation. You can’t avoid thinking.

Excuse #3: “Our company culture defaults to meeting live. I like this and my colleagues like this.”

Okay fine, this is a valid reason If your company is all about syncing live as the default mode of communication, you’re good. Carry on. Not all of my posts will apply to you.

Excuse #4: “My manager refuses to read more than one sentence.”

You may think I’m about to say “carry on” here too. You would be wrong.

A student in my course said, “My manager says they will only read one sentence in Slack or in emails. What should I do?”

It’s pretty egregious—almost insulting—for a manager to say this, given the complex nature of problems many of us solve at work.

If I were coaching this manager, I’d tell them this is an unreasonable expectation.

But, I thought about it more, and realized:

It’s possible that your manager said they want you to write one sentence because your writing is usually convoluted, meandering, and hard to digest. So their solution was to tell you to distill into one sentence.

In reality, what they want from you is clearer writing.

If they thought clearer writing was not feasible, then the next best option is trying to read less writing overall.

I don’t know the details of that student’s relationship with their manager. But if your manager says something similar to you, you can take the “one sentence only” literally, or you could try to improve your writing and see if that makes them more open to reading your messages.

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I am not blindly against meetings, nor am I blindly in favor of async communication.

There are plenty of reasons to hop on a call—when you have an actual topic to discuss, when you’re sharing information that would be better done with the lever of your tone of voice, you want the person’s real-time reaction, etc.

The takeaway is not simply: “Not everything needs to be a meeting.” Plenty of people have said this already, and I don’t think that’s particularly interesting. I think the interesting part is unpacking the unspoken reasons we might default to a call—and to be intellectually honest about whether you could share a perfectly good response in writing, if you took an extra beat.

Don’t do things as a thoughtless default. If you do it, stand by it and make sure it's what you believe is the most effective approach.

What you can do today

The next time someone asks you a reasonable question in Slack, and your urge is to say “let’s hop on a call,” ask yourself:

• If I think about this for a few moments, might I come up with a useful answer?

• What can I share in writing that will create a better baseline for a live conversation if we choose to have one?

• If I’m not sure what to say in writing, what would I say on a live call? Could I say that now in writing?

What’s your biggest takeaway and what’s making you think differently? Hit reply because I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next Wednesday at 8am ET.

Wes

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