Some of the most inspiring discussions come from someone bringing up an issue they have right there and then. Good discussions often start from something that doesn't seem so important, that doesn't have a clear outline from the start.
If there isn't the possibility to start a discussion instantly once in a little while, there is a good chance it won't ever happen.
On the other hand, in secret 1:1 calls with no trace, that only help one and only one person, you can appear busy and productive while also helping people in secret, and doing so multiple times for the same or similar problem. You reap the rewards multiple times.
And since people never put any initial effort at all (they just say "hi do you have a minute?" instead of describing their issue), if multiple people have the same problem right now, then you have plausible deniability for your multiple calls because you didn't know that they had the same issue, so that's why all calls were separate instead of solving them all at once.
Don't even mention the fact that others can explain their initial problem with screenshots, or with a Slack recording (literally 2 clicks, and then doing exactly the same as they would do during the first minute of the call anyway), to get quick context and then either solve the problem instantly or jump to a call. Nono, while those things get points for not being searchable, they still leave some useful information in the history (mainly some context and the moment in time when you had that conversation), and we can't risk having that.
Also, if they send the video, Slack might even include a searchable transcription (I don't know if that's a feature yet though), and if that wasn't bad enough, if you end up not knowing the answer, the video can even be shared with others on a shared channel to save time finding the person who knows how to fix the problem.
Hopefully you understand now the problems with async text communication.
Not everything needs to be recorded, in fact I'm very happy that most discussions aren't. Spare me the crap. I've seen many company wikis full of stuff that nobody ever looks up, because it's mostly irrelevant, outdated, or plain wrong content.
The value of discussions mostly isn't in the things that can be recorded or searched later, but in the effort the participants put into it.
As stated before, this is up to a certain threshold. One or a few low-friction discussions per day can be very fine. It shouldn't take up the biggest part of your day's focus time.
Having to cache in the previous state of the discussion whenever I receive a reply is exhausting. So some things are just not brought up.
And whenever it's actually an interactive synchronous live-chat, why not just hop on a call then?
Yes, but I've never once had a "can we hop on a quick call?" turn into that. Almost every single one of those that I've encountered could've been settled in a handful of chat messages. The things you describe happen to me during unplanned asides in meetings, long-term general chat channels, or impromptu in-person chatting.
My impression has been that the people who want a quick 1-on-1 call just don't like typing.
Yes, similar to my ex (can't get rid of her completely, shared custody of the kids) who always insist on sending voice messages. She just don't want to type and keep sending voice message after I told her several times I hated that because it made looking for past information super difficult.
By the way, wasn't there a slack like app that was working kind of a walkie-talkie kind of system within a team?
Sure, but give the person you asking for a quick call the context to decide if they also think it is a quick call. All the article basically is asking for is to provide enough context when contacting people.
