Email’s Friendly Fire – WSJ.com

by Ross Sivertsen | Nov 27, 2007 | Blog, Business

Link: Email’s Friendly Fire – WSJ.com.

You know it, I know it, and anybody who works in an organization knows it.

We are organizationally overrun by email. I’m not talking about the spam we get in our gmail or hotmail accounts. I’m talking about the bread and butter communications used to drive business in the modern workplace.

My organization RUNS on its email, it is the communication fuel that drives just about every interaction with coworkers and customers. But I get on the order of 100 emails a day on a variety of subjects, all coming from coworkers, not spam. “That’s not too bad,” you’re saying, “I get 200 messages a day.” Sound absurd? It’s not, I know for a fact that the many of the senior staff in my organization get that many when you count customers as well.

I ran across this article, written by Rebecca Buckman, in today’s Wall Street Journal on organizational software that’s used to sort and filter, not spam, but REAL messages. I’m going to take some commentary license, and change the purpose of the article, because it focuses on some software that helps organize the inbox of the driven down masses.

A couple of things I think are really worth noting here are the messages that are sent out not as messages that require action on the recipients part, but rather as the term “colleague spam” will become known.

You know the messages I’m talking about, you’ve seen them, and you’ve received them and you probably, willingly or not, sent them. They are the messages that have either a superfluous recipient on them because of a CYA factor or a broadcast message to everyone about “I’ll be on vacation tomorrow…”

Here’s the problem, business and our culture is being inundated with hundreds of pieces of information per day, we are exposed to so much, so fast, so often that having Blackberry’s is quickly becoming a requirement in many workplaces.

Buckman writes “Last year, the average corporate email user received 126 messages a day, up 55% from 2003, according to the Radicati Group, a Palo Alto market research firm.”

This all stems from the notion that we’re being more productive. In fact, we are becoming less productive. The fact of the matter is, Buckman quotes “By 2009, workers are expecting to spend 41% of their time just managing emails.”

Holy Cow! Nearly 50% of my time managing the influx of messages I’m receiving?! I have to ask myself in those circumstances am I really being productive and giving quality attention to the issues I address?

Many businesses are declaring an occasional “Email Moratorium Day,” where team members use any other medium to communicate OTHER than email. Where I to mention an “Email Moratorium” to some individuals (especially at my place of business) it would generate a visceral response; much like a crack addict suffering withdrawal (what does THAT say about this subject?).

Ok, so in most places a moratorium isn’t a practical solution, but there are ways to stem the addiction:

1. Be really conscious of the when and if a message is REALLY necessary (I’m not talking about limiting communication, I’m talking about whether or not the janitor needs to know you have a dentist appointment and won’t be in until noon when you send it to “everybody”).
2. Does the recipient list you have on your message really reflect the true audience of the communication, or are you just trying to CYA, or make a power play by sending false bravado to (among others) your boss.
3. Can your message be more effectively communicated through some other means (like getting up from your desk and walking down the hall, apart from the additional exercise, the communication becomes more personal), so often email is used as the de-facto communication method when the communication requires little more than a phone call or a visit.
4. Avoid using the “Reply to All” when at all possible, and reply only to the original sender, there’s no need to chime in to everybody just to say “Me too.”
5. Know the limits of what email can provide, if a message is going back and forth between two people like a ping-pong ball, it’s time to pick up the phone, or walk down the hall.
6. Just as with most things in life, apply the Golden Rule, if you don’t appreciate receiving email, why do you think that others will appreciate your superfluous email.

Here’s an excellent link on Email: Do’s and Don’ts from Stephen Wilburs of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Thanks very much to Rebbeca Buckman of the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Willburs of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Kristan Arnold, author of Email Basics:  Practical Tips To Improve Team Communication.

The Office Pessimists May Not Be Lovable, But Are Often Right – WSJ.com

by Ross Sivertsen | Nov 27, 2007 | Blog, Business

Link: The Office Pessimists May Not Be Lovable, But Are Often Right – WSJ.com.

Ok, I was doing research on another topic when I ran across this article, written by Jared Sandberg, in the Wall Street Journal.

Sandberg’s article asserts, you’ll need to read it for yourself, that "pessimists are more accurate at gauging success and failure rates (than optimists)," and that "evidence shows that pessimism can be highly motivational, as what’s called ‘defensive pessimism’ drives people to achieve their goals."

In my experience, more often than not, this is less of an issue of optimism versus pessimism, and more of a perception of control.

What I mean by that statement is this; I’ve spent an entire career (25 years) in the technology services business in manufacturing. It’s taken me nearly that long to learn the lesson that I don’t CONTROL most of my environment. I might have influence over the people and events around me, but I don’t CONTROL their actions or outcomes.

The ONLY thing I can control in my life is me, and my actions, and more specifically my reactions to people and events. When I don’t trust my intuition, and more spiritually, my faith, that things will work out the way they’re supposed to; and I try to control and manipulate the people and events to achieve outcomes I perceive as RIGHT, I, more often than not, fail… miserably.

I’m NOT saying that I sit around in a “Pollyanna,” self-delusional catatonic state, with my fingers plugged in my ears yelling “nah, nah, nah, nah… I don’t hear you!” I can be, at times, fairly pessimistic (just ask my wife).

The key here, in my humble opinion, is balance. It seems to me that it’s easy, when things get tough, to either ignore them, or run around screaming “the sky is falling!” It’s all about understanding the influence an individual has in a given situation, and acting in balance according to that influence.

For example, in a real life illustration, I have a friend whose organization is restructuring, and he finds himself reporting to a new supervisor, one he apparently didn’t see eye-to-eye with the first time they worked together. My friend in these circumstances had NO control over whether or not he was re-assigned. He DOES, however, have control over how he REACTS to the change.

Look, I’m not saying that change is easy, change is hard. But we as individuals have a choice on the attitude we adopt when reacting to crisis. In a study done by the VA on resiliency, soldiers most likely to survive a traumatic experience like a war time prison camp are those who have certain key characteristics, among that optimism.

So in the end, this is all about balance, and being active participants in our own lives. Inaction, whether it’s fostered by optimism OR pessimism is complacency, and complacency more than anything else will lead to failure.

I’m reminded; again, about the old joke the man sitting on the stoop of his house during a flood…

As the flood waters were rising, another man in a row boat came by.

The man in the row boat told the man on the stoop to get in and he’d save him. The man on the stoop said, no, he had faith in God and would wait for God to save him.

The flood waters kept rising and the man had to go to the second floor of his house.

A man in a motor boat came by and told the man in the house to get in because he had come to rescue him. The man in the house said no thank you. He had perfect faith in God and would wait for God to save him.

The flood waters kept rising. Pretty soon they were up to the man’s roof and he got out on the roof. A helicopter then came by, lowered a rope and the pilot shouted down in the man in the house to climb up the rope because the helicopter had come to rescue him. The man in the house wouldn’t get in. He told the pilot that he had faith in God and would wait for God to rescue him.

The flood waters kept rising and the man in the house drowned.

When he got to heaven, he asked God where he went wrong. He told God that he had perfect faith in God, but God had let him drown.

"What more do you want from me?" asked God. "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."