As we said before, everyone’s got a solution for the trials and tribulations of email.
Personal assistants (robot-icized). Internal social media divided by work groups. Automatic softwares that sort email by sender, topic, urgency, and other categories. New rules, from meeting protocol (turn off those $!%@!# laptops and smartphones) to days away from the app. And new behaviors about cc’ing or replying to all and eschewing large attachments, like photos.
It’s clear that something needs to be done about our 122+ individual daily emails – and 100+ billion sent every 24 hours.
Or does it?
How much, really, would each of us accomplish in a day without our e-crutches? [You have to admit that the e-newbies like Yammer and HipChat, Convo and Slack are just organized, social forms of our online work communications. They’re the latest forms of Sharepoint, where groups review and comment on documents and requirements and project management to-dos.]
Proponents of these group-wares cite transparency, the ease of exchange, the convenience of knowing that everyone who needs to be in the know is. Then again, detractors point to the silo-ing of corporate America and the tendency to ‘say anything’ in small collaborations, regardless of whether the boss is watching.
So in addition to resorting to snail mail from time to time (our most recent remedy), it’s entirely possible that we call on the change gurus to, well, talk about new behaviors. Such as leaders who’ve figured out how to work/not with email the best ways. Role models demonstrating collaboration in non e-ways. And a rewards system (in words or dollars) to motivate all.
Technology isn’t always our friend.