Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	June 17, 2008

Getting Rid of E-mail Last year I wrote an article on when not to use e-mail. In a nutshell, you shouldn't use e-mail: To communicate bad news, complaints or criticism: Deliver it face to face or at least by phone. Not voice-mail either. When you are seeking information that is not simple and straight-forward: Walk down the hall or pick up the phone and ask for it directly.  When you are seeking approval on something that is involved or controversial: Same answer as #2: in person or by phone. When you're sending a few people complicated instructions: Go visit them, or phone them, instead. When you are asking for comments on a long document (probably attached to your proposed e-mail): Sit down with people one-on-one and walk them through it (or collaboratively using screen-sharing technology, paragraph by paragraph, with changes and corrections displayed real-time). To request information from a group on a recurring basis: Automate it or otherwise embed it in the business processes.  To convey instructions to a large number of people: Put it in a policy or procedure manual or a self-paced e-learning module or use an interactive e-learning/videoconferencing tool.  To achieve consensus: Face-to-face, or videoconference or at least audioconference.  To explore a subject or idea: Use Open Space, or face-to-face, or videoconference or at least audioconference. To send news, interesting documents, links, policies, directory updates and other 'FYI' stuff: Post it, where those who care about it can browse or RSS-subscribe to it. With the exception of situations 6, 7 and 10 (where you need a 'sticky' place to post information where it won't get lost), these "no e-mail" situations are all more effectively addressed in real time. I developed a flowchart to capture this, but it takes a lot of words and takes up a lot of space. As I've become (thanks to Gen Millennium role models) a fan and a reasonably competent user of IM (takes some practice but even we geezers can manage it), I've added an 11th situation when you should not use e-mail: For simple, unambiguous, straightforward requests for information, requests for approval and instructions, to one or a very small group of people. IM instead -- IM lets you get an immediate response, and you can migrate to voice, and send files too, when necessary. Recently I looked through my 500 most recent work e-mails and my 500 most recent personal e-mails. I concluded: Over 95% of the work e-mails and personal e-mails could have been more effectively dealt with face-to-face, by phone, desktop video or IM. By effective I mean it would have taken no longer, and resulted in clearer, more personal communication. Excluding responses (and responses to responses), I receive twenty times as many e-mails as I send. My 'sent mail' file messages virtually all begin with "re:". In other words, I almost never initiate an e-mail 'thread' (I just can't get myself to call e-mail and discussion forum threads 'conversations', because they're really not).  In those rare cases when I initiate an e-mail, I generally should use a real-time tool (phone, f2f, or IM) instead. In a few cases I use e-mail at work when the recipient is a luddite (i.e. never answers the phone, which I think is rude, arrogant, and unprofessional, and is never available f2f, and doesn't have or doesn't use IM). But that's surprisingly rare. And I send personal e-mails only when I don't have the recipient's IM. The vast majority of work messages I receive are notifications and 'FYIs' (usually with long attachments I will never open, let alone read). In almost every case there is, or should be, some place where these could more appropriately be posted, where I (and the other multiple recipients) can browse (when we actually need to) or subscribe to them. In most other cases (when some action from me was required), a f2f visit, IM or phone call to me would have been more effective.  My personal e-mail inbox also includes a lot of notifications -- comments received on my blog posts, RSS updates, things I've subscribed to. If e-mail were to suddenly disappear, I could just as easily get all these on an RSS subscription page and browse and deal with them there. Some of my received messages are from readers and friends sending me links or articles. These are generally from people who (a) don't have blogs or del.icio.us or other feeds I can subscribe to and (b) don't use IM (or twitter). But I'll get you all over to one or the other, or both, eventually! So, what I'm saying is that if I had no e-mail address (and for that matter, no voice-mail box), I'd get along just fine. I'd send and receive lots of spontaneous IMs (including those in skype, twitter and second life) that sometimes migrate to voice-to-voice conversations. I'd get my exercise at work walking the halls to visit with people, and learn to be a better phone conversationalist. I'd use RSS to create my own personalized newspaper of important things to read, and I'd tweak the sources and filters so the volume was just enough to be comfortably manageable in the time I have available for reading. And I'd go home from work every night with nothing in my work inbox, and to bed at night with nothing in my personal inbox. I think a world without e-mail is completely viable, and would be incredibly liberating. After all, e-mail has only been around as the principal means of business communication for ten years (I'm told it first surpassed fax in 1998). Many in my grandfather's generation refused to have anything to do with voice-mail when it came in -- they thought it was a waste of time. Many in my granddaughters' generation feel the same way about e-mail. Both generations realized the value of conversations -- real-time, context rich, rapidly iterative -- over asynchronous communications. Maybe we should pay attention. Category: Communications Technologies 8:25:13 PM  trackback []  comment []

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