![]() ![]() It’s useful for anyone who leads and works in teams at all levels. Our adoption of Notion and building a writing culture has shown me that you don’t need to be at the level of Jeff Bezos or Oprah or Arianna Huffington, or any of those bigwigs who write a lot. I used to think of writing about work mainly as something for CEOs or execs writing books (for an external audience) or people with cool insights like TED talk speakers or people with blogs (also for an external audience), or alternatively, that writing at work mainly comprised of cut-and-dried business requirements or “documentation.” I feel like we’ve “leveled up” as a company now that we’ve started cultivating a writing culture at Tophatter. Jeff Bezos and Amazon folks are big proponents of their writing culture, and I can see why by living it myself. There is deeper written-out thought on the strategy and reasoning, on the “why” and “how this fits into the bigger picture” and “where we’re going.” I’ve come to realize that writing as a leader allows you to scale direction and vision, and share ideas or strategy that might seem clear or obvious to you because you’ve been thinking and debating about it a lot, but are not necessarily clear to your teammates or others.Ī writing culture is very different from a documentation culture. Both Ash and Matt are excellent writers, which helps drive a strong writing culture and inspires me to write more and improve my writing as well. It was amazing that within 2–3 weeks, all of Product and Engineering were using it, and then the entire company soon thereafter. Our CEO Ashvin Kumar and VP of Engineering Matt Rubens led the way to get us to try Notion back in January. Writing forces clarity of ideas and reasoning.Īt Tophatter, our leadership and company culture is very open to trying new things that could substantially improve our work and the business. I like to use the analogy of the Burning Man art car: you’re all in it together in this creative chaos, you can’t see that far in the dust storm, sometimes the wheels are barely on, and at any given moment people could fall off, but you still gotta still keep going and keep everyone on the art car.īecause Notion is a medium that lends to writing, it inherently gives more influence to the leaders and people who are good writers and able to communicate their ideas well through writing. Getting people on the same page on the details is additionally important for those building the product (like myself and my teammates), or anyone in roles of execution or operations.Įspecially in a fast-moving, ever-evolving company and product culture, it’s hard to communicate effectively and make sure everyone knows why we’re doing what we’re doing and the latest decisions we’ve made. Being able to get people on the same page at the high level is important for leaders. Notion makes it easier to get people on the same page, both at the high level AND also in the details. Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author and Wharton professor Unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking.” “To figure out whether you really understand an idea, write it down. It’s easier to lead and get people on the same page. Alive Design means that people know the content is fresh and they are motivated to use it.ĥ. It’s a more coherent way of communicating: you get more substance and focus, yet it helps you move faster.Ĥ. There is less urgency and anxiety about being left out of real-time Slack conversations and impromptu decisions.ģ. It’s easier to lead and get people on the same page.Ģ. ![]() Sidenote: In my personal life, I love Quip (which is now owned by Salesforce) but have not used it for team collaboration.ĥ Ways Notion has helped us move fast effectively:ġ. But these are not new age fluff they are part of the Alive Design that is key to the adoption and effectiveness of the tool as I will discuss further below. Notion is like a mashup of Google Docs and a wiki, with new age accoutrements like emoji, drag and drop, and the tag-ability of Twitter. (It’s not the best for actual real-time collaboration, but I’ll get into that later.) What is Notion? The benefits we have learned thus far is that Notion makes teamwork more efficient, effective, iterative, collaborative, and surprisingly open to creativity and expression of ideas in writing, WHILE producing less stress and mental disruption. If Slack is the current way of working, then Notion is the future way of working, leading, and collaborating. We currently live off of Slack and Notion. ![]() To give context, our company barely uses email for communication as it is. We’ve been using Notion at Tophatter for about 10 months now, and I was reflecting on the ways it has changed how we work (for the better). ![]()
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