Little cues in the tools we use can be very helpful in helping us communicate effectively. The shot to the right is from Slack, a tool that helps us at Modus Institute communicate, collaborate, and stay informed.We use it not only to chat with each other, but also to get status from our Personal Kanbans in LeanKit and Trello, as well as broadcast activities of our students at Modusinstitute.com. This means that no matter where we are, we have both our Personal Kanban and the information in Slack keeping us up to date.But we do work all over the world and sometimes if I'm in London and John is in Los Angeles, it is hard for me to know exactly what time it is for him. Even though he's online right now, the slack channel is telling me that for John, Toni, and Sam it is outside normal working hours. This helps by letting me know that John might not reply right away or at all, even though is shows him online (it's green).This helps me respect John's time and better plan for what I can do right now. If I need any of the three of them to complete a task, I should wait to pull it when they are truly available to collaborate.