I’ll Spatz You Later

Imagine if we had a chat-app and platform that enabled teams, during meetings, to address minor objectionable issues on the fly, before they were allowed to fester, compound and escalate into more intractable conflict incidents down the track.

Rather than interrupting the meeting with lengthy discussions, a team member simply raises the 0. Verbal Caution. If the behaviour is acknowledged and retracted, the meeting continues with minimal disruption. If it is not acknowledged, the response is simple:

“I’ll Spatz you later.”

This doesn’t mean the issue is being ignored or deferred. It means the issue will be more formally addressed and escalated, at a more convenient time after the meeting, through the already agreed chat-app process.

This way, the meeting stays focused on its objectives while accountability is preserved. There is no need to derail the agenda with an argument over tone, interruption or dismissive behaviour. The formal chat-app process begins later, once the meeting has finished.

Importantly, everyone in the meeting has already witnessed the interaction. If the issue eventually escalates to the Team & AI Review, those same participants will automatically be invited to contribute their recollections while the event is still relatively fresh.

Unlike continuous audio or video recording, which may influence behaviour and is impractical to apply to every workplace interaction, this approach documents only the moments that team members themselves identify as crossing an agreed behavioural boundary.

For researchers, it also creates valuable data. How many verbal cautions were issued? How many were acknowledged? How many were formally escalated? How many ultimately required review?

This places responsibility back on the whole team to address and resolve any of their minor issues rather than expecting their manager to intervene every time they feel there is an issue.

Also, at the other end of the spectrum, instead of recording every conversation in the hope of finding the important moments later, SpatzChat captures only the moments that matter.

Perhaps the future of workplace collaboration isn’t about recording everything we say or reporting every minor behavioural issue, but about finding a balance between the two.

Perhaps it’s giving every team member the confidence to say, calmly and fairly:

“I’ll Spatz you later.”

PS Yet to be formally tested. I am looking for teams willing to test the SpatzChat during meetings.
You can contact me, des at Spatz.ai or using that email address.