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Inspiration and Motivation for Attrove
The state of work communication today and how we can start to improve it.
Tim Monzures
April 12, 2024
Over-Communication
68% of employees feel they don’t have enough uninterrupted time to achieve their goals at work.1
Why?
Distractions from meetings, chat, and email.
I can certainly relate to that.
I managed an international team at Apple and spent the majority of my time communicating—up to my leaders, down to my team, and across to my peers. While connecting with my team was always a highlight, the sheer amount of time spent on status updates, exec reviews, and basic knowledge transfer was staggering. I would start my day on early morning calls syncing with India, spend business hours discussing with the teams in Cupertino and San Diego, and end with evening syncs with both my internal team in China and our vendor counterparts.
I had my first child in late 2022 and coming back to work in 2023 was hard. As much as I missed my team during my parental leave, the long days eventually led to exhaustion and unhappiness. It was time to make a change.
How did we get here?
The pandemic was challenging for many reasons. On the work front, knowledge workers suddenly had an increase in the number of weekly meetings. While these meetings were averaging shorter than the pre-pandmic era, they were more spontaneous and tended to focus on syncs (such as one-on-ones).2
The quick move to remote and online-only work during the pandemic had an accelerating effect on software tools like Zoom and Slack. These communication tools evolved to our new needs: unencumbered communication to support our new work-from-anywhere world. But they didn’t help us get more efficient in our communication. Instead, we just got more of it.
How might we get some of that time back?
With the evolution in open- and closed-source large language models (LLMs) -such as OpenAI’s GPT4, Anthropic’s Claude 3, and Meta’s Llama 2 - we can begin to automate and synthesize text better than ever before.
Let’s craft a solution that doesn’t just patch over the symptoms of communication breakdown but rather rebuilds the very framework of digital workplace interactions. This is more than just efficiency - it's about creating a workplace where information flows freely, good decisions are reached faster, and every employee can thrive in an environment rich with understanding and clarity.
The Vision
Attrove seeks to take advantage of AI advancements and make knowledge more accessible. Continue to use your existing apps (email, messaging, meetings, calendar, PM tools, code repos, etc.) and selectively choose messages to generate your next status update or review. Use our online portal to quickly synthesize your communications and documents and present them in a format of your choosing. Share it with your team, your boss, or ensure that the next employee who joins your team has access to the relevant information they need to hit the ground running.
I believe knowledge should be shared and built over time. Join me & Attrove as we navigate a better way to facilitate knowledge transfer. And in the process, give you a little bit of your time back each week.