“E-mail is familiar. It is comfortable. It’s easy to use. But it might just be the biggest killer of time and productivity in the office today.”
– Ryan Holmes (b. 1974), Canadian entrepreneur and founder of Hootsuite
E-mail is the bane of my existence. If you work in a company / school / office with more than three employees, it’s the bane of your existence, too.
DISCLAIMER: This is a rant. I don’t always rant in the Daily Difference, but this rant has been bubbling up for a long time, since the last time ranted about e-mail a couple rant-free years ago. And, yes, I have several hundred subscribers who receive the Diff via e-mail. Yes, I understand that my position on this topic might not dovetail with that fact. Bear with me, though, ok?
Now, where was I? Oh, yes, e-mail. I have an idea that will give every white collar worker at least 20% of their workaday lives back, and that will generally improve the relationships of everyone who is connected to a corporate e-mail server.
Burn the servers.
There are at least six historical references to a commander burning his boats, so that there was no way back — it was go forward and conquer, or die. I’m not necessarily a proponent of such radical approaches, but I do love history that conjures up an image of a couple million small fires burning, all at once, in every company in America. And, while the image of soldiers on the shore looking back at the boats aflame in the harbor thinking, “Well, we’d better conquer, because there is no other way…” is a powerful one, the millions of us looking at the smoldering servers have other, better options.
For example, pick up the phone!
Or, as wacky as this may sound — walk down the hall. Stop by the cubical. Shoot an instant message that says, “Let’s talk about this. Meet me at the coffee pot.”
There is no context to e-mail. People write things in e-mail that they would never say face-to-face. There is no tone to e-mail, yet every e-mail carries an implied tone. There are times when e-mail is our friend. In the other 97.67385% of cases, we ought to pick up the phone, walk down the hall and / or meet at the coffee pot.
Joe T says
Amen!