Ars technica reports today that the CEO of Atos is going to do away with internal e-mail in his organisation.
Atos CEO Thierry Breton says that only 15 percent of the 200 e-mails his staff receive on average are valuable, and that staff are wasting between 5 and 20 hours a week handling e-mail. Instead of e-mail, he wants staff to use instant messaging and other chat-like communications media.
Breton himself claims not to have sent a work e-mail for three years, saying that if staff want to communicate with him they can visit his office, call, or send a text message. The 56-year-old CEO explains, “e-mails cannot replace the spoken word.”
If we assume this is not some sort of Ryanair-style publicity stunt, should your organisation follow suit?
When I was taking my first tentative steps in the world of technical communication, I was told that different types of communication suited different media. Information that had a “long shelf life”, was instructional or required “deep learning” was best suited to the written word. Information that had a “short shelf life” and was conversational (a dialogue) was best suited to the spoken word.
The way we speak and the way we write, in general, differ in the way content is organised and sentences are structured. Traditional storytellers, for example, have used repetition (the rule of three) and rhythm when communicating orally.
Email sits uncomfortably in the organisation, because it’s used to communicate both short term and long term information. This means, often, the information is communicated poorly – it does a poor job at presenting both types of information.
It’s possible to move long term information to a platform that’s better suited to that type of information – to an intranet, a wiki or even a blog. I am uncertain if it is actually possible, at the moment, to move the short-term information onto a better a platform than email. Short-term information is, by its nature, more time-critical and interruptive in its nature.
I think we can learn from the adoption of Twitter and explore presenting short term information in more “stream-like” formats. I’ve modified my inbox so it looks more like Twitter – the summaries are on the left and the message preview panel is on the right (rather than below). I also offload most messages into folders, and have some new messages go into folders automatically, so there are only a few messages in my inbox.
Other considerations for Atos will be how they search and find information, and how they retain an audit trail.
It will be interesting to see if they succeed with this new policy.
My pet hate as a technical author is the lack of response to my emails. In fact, I find talking directly to the person always guarantees a better and more direct response. They tell you that they don’t have the time or, will make time or select a time to discuss your requirements. The problem with email (and I too am guilty) is you that you read it, then forget about it, or it is one among many which you don’t read or ignore until eventually you are chased. You clumsily apologise with the truth. However, you can see the chaser has a problem about your lack of response and doesn’t believe you. As a communicator, we should be encouraging people to talk directly. We become familiar with our fellow workers what we are attempting to achieve. This should help to get our jobs done in time with the correct input.
Technical writing is collaborative.
Collaborating for half an hour with an expert round a small table with a hard copy, or a long phone call when we are both looking at the same material, is far more productive and successful than any amount of email or use of a reviewing tool.
Getting a big group round a table with a projector works wonders as well.
It’s not a technical problem.
People do use email to hide (by forgetting or ignoring) but email allows us to set out our questions clearly, and not in a haphazard manner which can happen in meetings, especially if there more than two people. If you work remotely as I do, email is often the main contact with everyone.
The problem with the argument for doing away with it altogether is what happens when you want to tell or ask several people or groups of people something? You can’t just sit on their desk then, so how else do you achieve that? If someone can show me a better way (and more productive ) I’ll be happy to adopt it.
For me, email is great for asking questions, but for receiving helpful answers…not so much.
One thing that works is to compile questions from the various stakeholders (via email or from a comments form) into one large orderly table, send it round in advance, then slowly grind out the answers in a working group meeting. I like to write as much as possible in the actual meeting itself.
Working group meetings like this are hard work and often tedious, but they are irreplaceable for getting work finished and getting consensus.
In my company, we have an internal twitter-like application that everyone follows for internal communication and updates.
However, I still cannot refute the importance of an email for important announcements. How does one address a company of over 1 lac associates with verbal conversations?
Company Intranet can contain the data, but email notifications help reach out the entire employee strength.
A friend of mine sends everything where he is CCed straight to a junk folder that he reviews every few weeks. If it was important he’d be on the main list or otherwise know about it, being the logic. I think he only checks email twice a day. Hasn’t stopped him progressing to fairly dizzy heights in an international company.