New York Times: I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip
June 29 2008
A column by IBMer Luis Suarez appears in today's New York Times concludes with a rather provocative position:
E-mail can become extinct, if not repurposed altogether, even at big companies like I.B.M. An e-mail in-box no longer needs to be like Pandora's box.Let me quickly say that I completely agree with the second sentence, but entirely disagree with the words (though, perhaps, not the spirit) in the first.
Luis writes further:
I stopped using e-mail most of the time. I quickly realized that the more messages you answer, the more messages you generate in return. It becomes a vicious cycle. By trying hard to stop the cycle, I cut the number of e-mails that I receive by 80 percent in a single week.For the most part, Luis is expressing what most of us in the collaboration space have been saying for the last ten years. Collaborative software empowers people to share information and be more productive in more ways than ever before However, i completely disagree that it renders e-mail to dinosaur status, though that has been predicted in various forms for nearly ten years.
It's not that I stopped communicating; I just communicated in different and more productive ways. Instead of responding individually to messages that arrived in my in-box, I started to use more social networking tools, like instant messaging, blogs and wikis, among many others. I also started to use the telephone much more than I did before, which has the added advantage of being a more personal form of interaction. ....
THINK about whether my experience could work for you. Think about how to use social networking tools to eliminate spam and to avoid repeatedly answering the same question from many different people. These tools can also save you from an accumulation of online newsletters that never get read, and from those incessant project status reports that clutter many in-boxes.
If you have seen me present recently, you've seen me get to a slide like #18 from my recent ILUG/DNUG presentation and talk to this -- how many of you get 100+ e-mails a day? Lots of hands. How many of you are seeing your e-mail volume decrease? Far fewer.
Personal experience -- even though my responsibilities have increased, my e-mail volume is, for the most part, declining slowly over the last 12 months.
That slide has a key phrase -- Your in-box is a catalyst for productivity. Even if you move all of your collaboration to other tools, there still needs to be a prompt, a push, a tickle, an alert ... something that draws you into the collaboration. For as much as this industry has driven towards contextual collaboration -- and I believe that Notes 8 delivers on that far better than any other tool in the market -- it is still the ultimate challenge to draw users into the collaborative realm.
For example, in a strange-but-true aspect of my job at IBM, few of the people I work with on a daily basis read my weblog. I completely agree with Luis that blogging has a significant benefit in that it helps you "avoid repeatedly answering the same question from many different people". But in my world, that has only been a reduction, not an elimination. I can't choose how you as customers, partners, colleagues, or industry figures choose to obtain information about Lotus Notes.
If I blog about something, it will definitely reach a segment of my "customer" base. But many key IBMers will never see it (even if I started cross-posting to my internal w3 weblog, which is time-consuming), and that leads to e-mails, instant messages, phone calls, discussion forum postings,and all other manner of information-seeking. Thus, while I applaud and am proud of Luis's thought leadership, I know that it is far easier to give up e-mail in a role such as his. In my role, my customers determine the method, urgency, and bandwidth of our communication.
Ruth Kaufman left a really insightful comment on my twitter stream and on this blog last week. In many organizations, there are impediments to e-mail as a productivity tool. Compliance, security, "mail jail", all of these get in the way. In some companies, such as a customer I met last year, that has lead users to find their own tools -- they don' have to worry about a 200 MB mailbox quota if they are using Google groups or a public wiki. However, there are a heck of a lot of risks -- and definitely some organizational knowledge loss -- when going outside the firewall.
Thus, for me at least, the right direction forward is a model that brings together all of my collaborative tools. A way in which I can work with things like instant messaging, discussions, activities, shared spaces, and external tools like web content, Twitter, RSS feeds, and widgets. If all of that comes together in an "inbox", and contains one-to-one or one-to-group asynchronous communication, too, then I can dig it. It doesn't necessarily have to be something separate (as was discussed a few weeks ago on Jive CMO Sam Lawrence's blog)... in fact, I think I already have a tool that does all of the above. Does it sound familiar?
Link: New York Times: I Freed Myself From E-Mail's Grip >
Post a Comment
- 2
Vitor Pereira http://www.vitor-pereira.com | 6/29/2008 4:48:18 PM
"...in fact, I think I already have a tool that does all of the above..."
You do? Can I have it? :-)
On a serious not now, I think one of Alan's considerations is going to get all the ToyPhone fanboys cranky really quick.
- 3
Nick Halliwell http://www.comware.net | 6/29/2008 7:15:43 PM
Ed,
In SE Asia, we have a different problem, its actually getting people to use e-mail and to use it properly. I have many customers who send a fax when an e-mail is far more appropriate and of course cheaper. I also have customers who hardly ever open there e-mail box, and other who print out every e-mail.
For example 1 customer in the Philippines who was sent a licence renewal code for some Notes software, he kept writing to me asking for it. I sent it to him 6 times over a 3 week period, I tried to Fax to, number always engaged, even ringing I could not get through. We have a Philippine programmer based in the Philippines so I asked her to ring the company and she got through and the reply she got was, Agh... I don't bother to read my in box.
This company is a subsidiary of an American company!!!!
So the issues raised above are only applicable in your market and other very mature markets. Here we are still trying to get people to use email and collaboration tools. In Asia people are reluctant to use collaboration tools as they feel that they are giving away there personal knowledge and as well all know knowledge is power. I have not seen any signs of Asian companies wanting or even understanding social social networking tools.
Nick
- 4
Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 6/29/2008 8:39:28 PM
Re Luis' remark "I started to use more social networking tools, like instant messaging..."
I fail to see how IM is any more (or less) of a social networking tool than email. I use IM. I love IM. But frankly, if you look at how often IM is used when an email would suffice, versus the opposite, on the balance I'd rather see more use of email, not less.
-rich
- 5
Oivind Oiestad | 6/30/2008 12:36:54 AM
"Personal experience -- even though my responsibilities have increased, my e-mail volume is, for the most part, declining slowly over the last 12 months."
Excellent proof of the fact that high responsibility comes with less work load… :-)
- 6
Gerco Wolfswinkel http://www.wolfswinkel.net | 6/30/2008 1:25:14 AM
At my current job, work is entirely inbox centric. As it is a Microsoft shop, there's really nothing else, collaboration tools wise, but the inbox and a halfheartedly done Sharepoint 2003 install.
We're building up a wiki now, but I don't see that decrease my email volumes yet.
- 7
Ports http://www.mrports.com/ | 6/30/2008 5:22:11 AM
I think the whole area is very interesting. I presented on the topic a little while ago: { Link }
The real challenge is not to eliminate email but to use it in an appropriate way. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I still get letters through my post box every morning - email was meant to kill that - but it hasn't because you don't email birthday cards and magazines etc.
Also - notice Luis' Job title "Social Software Programs & Enablement: Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist". His role may make it much more straight forward for him to interact with the rest of the world without sending email - I think the situation may be culturally very different for a sales manager in a manufacturing buisness for example.
- 8
Mike McP http://www.openntf/mPortal | 6/30/2008 9:30:50 AM
I use other tools, but still prefer email. As a developer, most of my communication is 1:1, and generally app or issue specific.
The idea that the author prefers to use phone over email is odd. I've been trying to break people of calling me directly for years, as it's tough to catalog and store the phone conversation. I'd much rather have a succinct email that I can categorize or forward if needed. If all my emails were problem support, I could likely replace a good bit with a problem management tool, but that's only a small portion of my email communique.
I don't see email going anywhere, and I actually prefer a mail database that I can Boolean search over just about anything.
- 9
mikelotus | 6/30/2008 11:34:06 PM
I would like to comment further, but I don't have time to read the article as my inbox has over 100 unread emails in it now.
- 10
JR | 7/1/2008 12:16:13 PM
Great summary!
I exactly have such a tool being the catalyst for my productivity....Lotus Notes 8.0.1...hopefully soon for all other our employees as well.
- 11
Luis Suarez http://www.elsua.net | 7/2/2008 5:46:39 AM
Hi Ed! Thanks much for picking this up and for sharing your thoughts on the subject. I think deep down we both agree on the overall issues and how to overcome them. I have tried to capture people's thoughts from the comments, as well, as your original blog posts on the topic and created a follow up entry in my own blog expanding further on why I feel it is a very unique opportunity for Lotus Notes 8 to demonstrate what is *really* capable of and not just talking about e-mail & calendaring.
To me Notes 8 has got the additional & unique advantage vs. other tools it is competing against that while most of us are moving away from e-mail into much more collaborative environments it'll be Notes 8 still the main tool we would use at work. And for various reasons. In that blog post I mentioned just a few of them...
Thanks again for picking up the article and for the link love! :)
- 12
Luis Benitez http://socializeme.blogspot.com | 7/2/2008 10:09:10 PM
Hi Ed,
Just like you, I've experienced the same decrease in the number of emails. And, it's nothing that I've done on purpose. Just like you my responsibilities have changed and increased over the past year, yet my emails continue to decline. I can only attribute it to my blog: more and more people are consuming my knowledge through there (or through my social bookmarks) and there's no need to 'poke' me via email for the typical: "hey luis, do you know where I can find X for Y customer with integration to Z??"
This, in turn, has made me more productive at my job, allowing me to share more! The irony on all this is that at first, I didn't feel comfortable sharing my knowledge, fearing that my employer could get rid of me. What I've found, is that now I have more executive visibility and a farther reach to other parts within IBM. Blogging and Bookmarking (socially) have really helped me expand my network, which is important for career growth!
This is a topic I really want to comment on in detail, but I don't have time atm, I have to get to the airport!
Quickly...
I don't think of it as email vs. X vs. Y vs. Z. I think the key is to use the right tool for the right job.
Some things to consider include:
- Is the conversation 1:1, 1:n, or n:n.
- Should the information be private, or shared.
- Is it internal or external?
- Do you have regulations/compliance rules that need to be - followed.
- What device do you need to access the information from, both now and in the future.
- Will the medium convey the message properly? I.e. Do you need a full rich text email with graphics, or is 140 characters of text ok, or do you need to actually speak to the person?
At times new technology does replace old. I've not used a fax machine in years. However, sometimes the new shinny object adds to the list of tools, example chat, blogging, micro blogging, social networks, etc.
Hopefully the future inbox will use some type of publishing protocol (RSS, Atom, ____) that will enable the flood of information from multiple sources to be aggregated, filtered, searched, archived, data mined, shared, taken offline, secured, and certain actions to be automated.