I call this “Don’t Ask, Tell” and it has so many uses inside but also outside work. It really is just a basic communication skill to hone. It leads to concise and decisive outcomes.

I actually have this conversation a lot with my wife. She’s more of an asker. A recent example from earlier this evening. We had arrangements set to meet a group for dinner. Her style is to send a text to the group, 8 people, saying “what time is everyone arriving?” Which is so open ended it would initiate a flurry of comms. But, we knew we would be there an hour early because of where/when we were dropping our kid off for the evening. So I just said TELL them when will be there and TELL them we’ll be at the bar if anyone wants to have a drink beforehand. So much more straight forward, everyone showed up early and it was perfect with minimal comms required. Sure it was a lucky accident that everyone had care for their kids lined up to and was able to make it but the point is It took no time and actually didn’t even require any response at all in the case someone was not monitoring their messages.

It’s somewhat related to the idea of “ask for forgiveness, not permission” which I’m a huge fan of in all kinds of ways. Sure it can be riskier but I’m a rebel at my core so it comes with the territory. But this has its place too, group collaborations like GitHub repos is probably not a good place to yolo big changes that effect other people.