Once I’ve read and commented on the news and satisfied my curiosity at the same time, I turn to the mentions (@-Mentions) in our Jira work system with its Agile Hive add-on. It probably doesn’t really matter which system you use. Modern work management systems allow you to mention other users using an @-mention. Those addressed then receive a corresponding message in either the application itself or by email. Anyone who has a question about a task or thinks that I can make a contribution or should be informed “mentions” me. It’s the modern form of a CC in an Email.

I work through these messages and comment on them. The comments here are not meant to be nice and friendly. They keep to what’s important. This is because (and I experience this with our customers from time to time as well) if you don’t react consistently to these mentions, you show your co-workers that it’s better to report their concerns to you personally or use other methods that take much more time.

If I think that my co-workers are mentioning me too much, I simply tell them by reporting back to them in the task: “I still don’t understand why this is so important to me for you to mention me? What feedback or support can I give you?” In response, the respective employee can help me understand right away, or describe their issue more precisely. Or just let it be. This allows me to make sure that mentions are only ever used in a focused and action-oriented (and not excessive) manner. 

Working through these mentions accounts for a large part of the core work I perform at the company. And the amount of time it takes reflects this. I usually get mentioned when my co-workers want to tap into my experience or special knowledge. Sometimes, however, they want me to validate their plans or analyses for alternatives and decisions. I consider this to be of incredible value. 

Sometimes the tasks are too complex for me, or I simply don’t have enough time or energy to find a solution for them at that moment. I then create a separate new task, link it to the current ticket, and write a short comment to announce that I will take a closer look at it later. 

This makes it sound as though I spend most of my time in our team task management system (Jira at our company) working on this type of thing. But that’s not the case. Since I’m also heavily involved in other areas of work, including conception, content writing, interfaces, and also communicating with our customers, large parts of this work take place on our Linchpin intranet system where we process all text-based use cases. 

When I’m doing this work, I constantly jump from one software system to the other and back again. Links and integrations make this method of working easier. Some intranet teams want to get around this completely and look for a single, large, masterful, all-encompassing intranet solution. Forget that idea! In my experience, such endeavors simply result in a mess. The individual features end up being mediocre. And native and better central data storage in a single system simply cannot make up for it. But that’s something we can talk about in more detail later as well. 

For the moment, let’s stick to my workflow and working day. Once I’ve finished with the mentions in Jira and Confluence, I’m pretty much finished with the bulk of my work. I normally take a little time to walk around the office and chat with my coworkers in person. This results in another quality of interaction – and not uncommonly ends with me taking bits of work back to my office. I often merge different bits of work or point out my current thinking here. To do this, I use @-mentions as well. 

I spend the rest of my working day (although sometimes there isn’t much time left) writing and driving my own projects forward. The writing part is explained quickly. Because I also work in marketing at our company, I assist our production department with content. In the past, when there was no editorial team, I would often record and publish some catchy YouTube videos. These days, however, I’m surrounded by people who are specialists in these areas who can do it much better than me. I’ve shifted the focus of my work to more conceptual aspects that are preparatory in nature.

Link to this page: https://seibert.biz/intranetbookmentions