Sharing is not always caring

TLDR;

If you 'share' information by dumping a forward into a wide channel and walking away, you didn't help. You created noise, seducing people to ignore important stuff, and (sometimes) successfully outsourced your own responsibility. Bad move.

Longer version.

This practice lives in big companies and dependency-heavy projects. Many teams, engineers, stakeholders, 'platform' people, 'business' people etc.

A person gets a piece of information and instead of analyzing it or better acting on it: he or she rushes to post it in a wide Slack channel:

- FYI // who is you? - We need to integrate this // there is nothing ready to integrate - We need to do this // no, you need to do this!

No owner. No 'I read it.' No 'here is what it means..'. Just a link and good vibes.

This is 'forward and forget'. It's a corporate (or human?) trick that looks like responsibility from far away, but up close it's just dumping.

Wide sharing without ownership is a shit habit

When you post something important to a channel with, you know, actual people in there and don't give it a second thought, the next happen:

• ignoring, because someone else will deal with it.

• start acting when it is not your domain, but because you are conscientious (basically you're 'someone else')

• understand and ignore is very tempting as there is no particular task for anybody

  
  

So yes, you 'shared'. And in exchange, you made the signal-to-noise ratio worse for everyone.

Forwarding without reading is how you spawn pointless chaos

If you didn't read or understand it, don't forward it to the wide. This is not a radical idea.

Because if you forward without analysis, you get questions. Always.

And then you (the messenger) do the classic routine:

• 'I'm not sure, let me ask.'

• 'I'll connect you with the author.'

• 'Let's do a quick call.'

• 'Can you summarize your questions?'

  
  

Which is funny, because the people who love such forwards usually sloppy on well organized information. They hate tracking threads. They hate reading answers. They hate remembering what was said. They hate being pinned down to a concrete statement.

But they love writing long boring docs where you're just fucking can't understand what the point is and why it couldn't be one sentence.

The worst part: often the action is on the forwarder

Here is the truly magical move. Sometimes the information you 'shared' requires actions from… you.

You own the integration. You own the dependency. You own the rollout. You are literally on the critical path.

But instead of reading and acting, you 'share' it and let random readers do the analysis. If you're lucky, someone will DM you with a summary, and you can pretend this was collaboration. Well.. it's not. It's weaponized helplessness with extra steps.

'But I'm being transparent'

No. You're being noisy.

Transparency is not 'I posted a link.' Transparency is 'I processed the information and made it actionable.'

Management is not moving information around like a mail server. It's moving meaning:

• what changed,

• why it matters,

• who needs to do what,

• when,

• and what happens if we do nothing (which is usually what your 'FYI' post is optimizing for).

  
  

A grown-up way to share information

Before you post, do the adult thing: spend 5–15 minutes, read the damn thing, and decide what you want to happen.

Then share like this:

• what changed (in your words)

• impact (in your words)

• what you want done (explicit ask)

• who you expect to react (tag them)

• is it urgent (tagging also distracts, so inform if it is a disaster or person can get back to it later)

• source link (fine, include it)

It can be ugly, imperfect, and still 10x better than 'FYI'.

And one more rule.

If you shared it, you own the follow-up. If nobody reacted, it's on you to ping. If questions appear, it's on you to answer or drive the thread to a conclusion. If it requires a decision, it's on you to make sure a decision happens.

Be a grown-up person in the room.