Maybe e-mail isn't such a great idea, after all

[Woodmonkey]

Maybe e-mail isn't such a great idea, after all

Management consultant Ken Siegel says e-mail has become the perfect way to avoid solving problems, according to columnist Tom Regan.\

Ken Siegel doesn't beat around the bush. He doesn't like e-mail.

"I don't even have an e-mail account," he says. "When I tell that to the executives I work with, first they look at me with surprise, and then they look at me with envy."

Dr. Siegel, a psychologist and president of Impact Group, management consultants in Los Angeles, is on a bit of a crusade. He wants there to be less e-mail in the world. So he's helping his business clients organize activities such as a "no e-mail Friday" in order to increase productivity.

That's right: increase productivity.

"E-mail is not a communication device, it's a broadcasting device," says Siegel. "It will actually truncate communication. And in the truest sense of the word, it has become a psychological dependency. We have convinced ourselves that we can't live without it."

E-mail takes up more and more of our time at work, according to Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif., research and consulting firm. E-mails sent by a company's workers are projected to increase 27 percent this year, to an average of 47 a day – up from 37 a day in 2006. And that's not the upper ranks of a company, where even more e-mails can accumulate.

The question then becomes "Do we really want our company to be spending so much of its time doing something that ultimately isn't productive?"

But how can we live without it?

Take, for example, my full-time job at National Public Radio. I get e-mails nonstop all day long: e-mails about stories, e-mails from human resources, e-mails about people looking for lost Blackberrys or books that they left in a recording booth, e-mails purportedly from high-ranking folks in Nigeria who want to give me lots of money, e-mail about.... You get the picture.

I can almost hear Siegel smiling on the phone as I recite this litany. He's obviously heard this before. "And how many of those e-mails are you really glad you got?"

Truthfully? Not all of them, for sure.

That's his point exactly. Siegel says people need to consider how much e-mail adds "to the value of their days." Most of the executives he works with say they spend two to three hours a day on e-mail (about 150 to 250 messages) and on average only 16 to 19 percent of those messages met the value-added criterion.

Siegel is also blunt about another use for e-mail.

"E-mail has become the 21st century's 'cover your butt' technique of choice," he says. "It's also become the interpersonal coward's device of choice."

People will send e-mail as a way to avoid dealing with an issue, by pointedly not dealing with it in a quick, prompt manner, he says. If you have a problem that needs to be solved quickly, e-mail is almost always the worst way to approach that solution.

And the problem has grown worse as more and more businesses expect employees to use personal digital assistants such as Blackberrys and Treos. Once upon a time, we only had to worry about e-mail when we were at our desks. Now it follows us around, virtually tugging at our sleeves, demanding that we pay attention.

When Siegel works with business executives, he tries to give them strategies to tame the digital beast and get more value from their work.

Thus "No e-mail Fridays" were born. But it was not a painless birth for many who tried it. In a recent piece in The Wall Street Journal, Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, training and consulting firm, supported the idea of no e-mail one day a week. But she included a warning: "When you try to take e-mail away from some users, they're going to panic."

Panic? I would expect riots.

Ever seen people with their Blackberrys? It's like watching Pavlov's dog. The moment the stimulus is given (an e-mail arrives), the response is provoked: "Must answer now!"

Siegel agrees that it's not easy. But the benefit, he says, is – yes – increased productivity once you get over those initial panic attacks.

Siegel says once people can't rely on e-mail, problems are solved more quickly. An e-mail string that might bounce back and forth in six to 12 messages over a day or two sometimes can be solved with a 10-minute face-to-face meeting. And that face-to-face thing actually improves relationships.

Siegel offers other ideas. One executive he worked with started blocking all messages on which he was cc'd. After a while, people realized that if they wanted this executive to help solve an issue, they would have to talk to him in person.

Siegel knows that e-mail is a part of our working world now, and there's no turning back. But he also believes that it's time we grabbed the e-mail bull by its horns and wrestle it into submission. E-mail should not dictate how we operate at work, or even at home, he says.

"E-mail is a tool with clear and viable uses and benefits," Siegel concludes. "Communication isn't one of them. Businesses and individuals need to set guidelines when it should be used and when it shouldn't be used. And we'll all be better off once we do it."

The Source

[conlor]

I have to disagree with him. Instead of calling a co-worker in another office repeatedly, or leaving a voice mail, they can see an e-mail and type the answer quickly.

[Betty Boop]

I can see that it could definitely be addictive - to an addictive personality. Too many typos or errors by word omission can happen in written text (not that I have ever forgotten a "not" or such in my time - lol). In person, especially in an office with cubicles less than 10 feet apart, there is something very nice about being able to discuss and clarify and that third dimension of facial animation and body language are ready communicators that the flat of a monitor screen just does not afford.

There's a lot to be said about being able to look someone in the eye and address needs, concerns, and information that a flat screen just doesn't allow. In business dealings that lack of communication can be fatal to the direction a project takes and/or its ultimate success or failure. I prefer the human touch.

[SherryGrace]

Most people I know abuse their work email, daily. Taking personal emails from both co-workers and persons outside of the company. Jokes, etc. It is time consuming and is actually theft of company time.

Even work related emails can be distracting. I use mine only to inform and ask very simple questions. I do not use it to try to solve problems of any real size.

*What time are you leaving for the marketing meeting on Friday?
*You wanted me to call Mary about next month's event. What's her cell number?
*Change the AC filters. (I sent this one at the beginning of the month, every month.)
*I need to talk to you about John's account.

Otherwise, we go face to face to "discuss" anything.

I bet this guy is hated by employees (taking away their play time) and by managers (forcing them to find the nerve to go face to face, and resolve issues).

[satin_patriot]

Originally Posted by conlor

I have to disagree with him. Instead of calling a co-worker in another office repeatedly, or leaving a voice mail, they can see an e-mail and type the answer quickly.

True. On the other hand, if they weren't so busy answering their emails, they might get to the phone a little more swiftly...

In the cubicle world, email is sometimes the only way to maintain some level of confidentiality. The noise level can hit the ceiling pretty quickly in a cube farm.

[Betty Boop]

And yet ... people in offices creatively problem-solved and innovated for centuries without artificial/removal walls between them. Cube farms came into vogue in the late 1970s early 1980s unfortunately. Yep, the noise level definitely did increase when we had to start standing to shour our questions over the walls of the cubicles rather than just solving them face to face "in the pool." And the chat/e-mail addicts found a safe haven that did indeed quiet the work place - only the productivity has dropped off.

In my ideal office, I'd get rid of the cube farms as well as the e-mails, if I had my preferences. Neither have done much to increase communication between workers or management in the last 25 years since their inception to give the employee a sense of privacy from coworkers in focusing on task. How did Americans of earlier generations every do it? (tongue-in-cheek intentional)

In a cubicle, the e-mail addict has simply been given a hiding place to indulge in their addiction, much like the alcoholic who hides the bottle in the toilet tank finds a place that chills and cools and behind a locked door leaves others out of the loop. One addictive behavior is usually only replaced by another - the best to hope for is that the replacement addiction is benign. Wasted/nonproductive time by managers and employees alike, who e-mail their days away, is company theft - but which the company has actually endorsed, encouraged, and enabled, I believe.

Sherry Grace is absolutely right, I think, in her approach.

Even work related emails can be distracting. I use mine only to inform and ask very simple questions. I do not use it to try to solve problems of any real size.

*What time are you leaving for the marketing meeting on Friday?
*You wanted me to call Mary about next month's event. What's her cell number?
*Change the AC filters. (I sent this one at the beginning of the month, every month.)
*I need to talk to you about John's account.

Otherwise, we go face to face to "discuss" anything

Hers is a well-balanced approach but implies a self-discipline that too many office workers and managers have not internalized.

Better to get rid of the temptation than to have the temptation overpower and sink the company. Just my opinion based on my work experiences.

[BrianK]

E-mail is still a great idea. Misuse would more accurately describe the point.

Companies of any size used to send paper memos. Those were replaced by e-mail. Fast effective and of course ecologically friendly because paper is not used. E-mail is easily filed by any number of ways. No massive office cabinets needed.

Then personal use crept in along with mundane time consuming misc. memos that could be handled over the phone in a matter of seconds.

Nope IMO it isn't e-mail use that's the problem it's misuse. Kind of like people driving with a cell phone stuffed in their ear. Not the cell phone; it's how it's used.