On the Kūlia i ka nu‘u warpath: The Email Enemy

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Comments

[Adrian Savage]

Serendipty strikes again, Rosa.

I posted today on the topic of Speaking Out [http://www.slowleadership.org/2006/03/thoughts-on-speaking-out_22.html] and why it's something people are afraid to do; then got a great comment showing exactly what happens to good people who say the wrong thing to insecure bosses.

Hooray for being the champion! Just recognize they don't always win a gold medal. Sometimes it's a pink slip.

Adrian

[Rosa Say]

Good article Adrian, and like you, I feel for the person who commented there for you.

You offer up a good reason why I am proposing collaboration with the right person within this warpath, fondly called the Top Dog, and hopefully a GREAT leader and not a short-sighted one. I have also made a couple of other assumptions here:

1. We have proactive, positive people in our Ho‘ohana Community reading this, people aspiring to innovative and aloha-filled management practices who are informal and/or titled leaders in their own right, respected for the initiatives they propose.

2. Two people don’t really make that effective a warpath when you tackle email mediocrity in an entire company. I am also guessing that a GREAT (and compassionate) Top Dog who agrees with the assumption of potential merit with this experiment, would not subject people to cruel and unjust chaos in this experiment; he or she would engage more collaborators, hopefully their entire leadership team.

3. They would also provide more lifelines, i.e. more coaching, suggestions and ideas for “the better way.” Thus my shout-out here for more ideas within our own online community!

However I did write this from the standpoint of what we as individuals can do to effect change in our own behavior. When you truly think about this, it is also a personal campaign one could wager strictly within their own circle of influence, by themselves, or within their team or department.

Me, myself and I, I do realize how much I need to pick up the telephone and be more personally responsive to people versus the easy way out of hitting reply to emails.

[Rick Fuqua]

On one hand, email is now more important than electricity to some people. With the proliferation of laptops, web portals and blackberry's, people expect real-time access to our messaging systems.

On the other hand, email has dehumanized the workforce. No need for confrontation - just email your argument. I once knew a manager that fired an employee by email.

On the other other hand, email has increased the sharing of information - employees are widely informed at a much faster pace.

I agree that email is way over used, but I don't want to go back to those yellow interoffice envelopes and typed memos either. (Remember interoffice memorandums and administrative assistants that actually used a typewriter.)

I'm afraid of this experiment, but it could work great on a departmental basis. I may try a one day ban inside one of my teams.

[Rosa Say]

Rick, I love when you comment here, for you are open, honest, and you have a wonderful knack for looking at both sides of everything. I readily admit that my Email Experiment is for the Braver than Brave and may be a bit extreme, perhaps even foolhardy in this day where email is so irreversibly ingrained into our work systems, unless there is considerable preparation in place to support this experiment.

I myself am a huge fan of email for my own work productivity, and like you, I do not want to go back to those yellow inter-office envelopes! Boy, did you evoke some stark imagery for me with that memory of returning to my office at the end of a long day in the trenches to find a stack of them waiting for me in my in tray… yuck.

The point is exactly what you have picked out: our practice of email abuse has dehumanized too much of our work, and we must strive, Kūlia i ka nu‘u, for that balance in which we use it for timely information supplemented by person-to-person conversation.

[Rick Fuqua]

...a small bonus today is all of the walking around I have been doing instead of emailing everybody. TGIF.

[Karen]

Hi Rosa,
I'm often the one here reading your wonderful posts, but dont usually leave a reply. This one, however, I want to add my bit.

The company I work for here in Australia has initiated special days (on an irregular basis - we've had four so far) in line with our corporate values.

Basically all staff are encouraged to uphold the value by communicating by phone or face to face - the internal email is actually switched off. Very similar to what you are proposing here, only we are physically blocked from emailing internally (and heavily discouraged from emailing clients too). This is an initiative of the top dog and the entire management team.

It works well - people have actually come to realise the value of speaking with the other person, and a lot of misunderstandings have been cleared up or avoided altogether because no-one is firing off a 'heat of the moment' email.

Each time we have had this specific focus day, the rate of acceptance of phone and face to face conversations has increased even more.

I'd love to hear others experience of your experiment.

[Rosa Say]

Wow Karen, that is magnificent!