10 reasons to tackle corporate email – reason 4
A manager who worked for me mentioned one week that he needed to come into work on the weekend. We worked for a company that did more than pay lip service to work/life balance, and so I quizzed the manager on the reasons for the extra hours.
‘Swamped with email’ was the response. So I asked the manager to carry out a quick task. I asked him to check how many of the emails in the ‘overload’ were in direct response to an email the manager had sent out.
Not surprisingly, the answer was up around 90%. And not surprisingly, a number of those emails were to members of our own team.
What we found was that email wasn’t helping us make decisions and solve problems on some issues. It was just extending the interaction, or delaying it. A bit like playing tennis. When the ball is on the other side of the court it is someone else’s turn!
So much interaction on email is kept between two people. It’s not visible, and it can sometimes be easy to add to the problem, not resolve it. Not much beats face to face interaction, or a phone conversation of course. But there are tools which, because of their openness, transparency and immediacy, make the process of discussing, agreeing and actioning more efficient.