Email Best Practices: Email is NOT a Meeting
Posted Under: Email Best Practices, Email Overload, Information Overload, Productivity, Tips
Email is NOT a meeting!
Some people use e-mail to “discuss” issues and gain opinions. Each time an opinion question is sent to numerous people or to a group list, the e-mails tend to develop branches: the opinions multiply exponentially, the threads take on different paths, and each recipient is now receives multiple strings of the same subject e-mail that have gone in different directions. It all results in spending much more collective time than a one time meeting or teleconference may have taken. This makes it more difficult for participants to see the big picture and the overall opinions. The multiple threads are confusing and time consuming.
Instead of using e-mail this way, it is much more effective and productive to call a meeting and discuss the issue in detail. Invoke the “two-round rule:” when you see e-mails developing circling back the second time, call a meeting to discuss the issue in further detail and put an end to future lack of productivity caused by all those e-mails. Better yet, call the meeting in the first place.
Reader Comments
Let’s consider why email is such a seductive collaboration tool.
1. It is the de facto collaboration platform. Other technologies have failed to supplant it.
2. In a virtual world calling a meeting is increasingly difficult and consumes more time than dropping 2 cents into a thread.
3. Phones are asynchronous (90% voicemail) and sooo ’90s.
4. Blogs and Wikis are more like parking lots. Even with notifications and feeds.
5. There is no WIFM to change behavior.
Real behavioral change comes from commonly defined best practices, team training and coaching (peer pressure). These are precepts noted in “The Hamster Revolution: Managing Your Email Before It Manages You”, Mike Song et al. Check out cohesiveknowledge.com