Workplace Challenges

E-mail backlash brewing

It's a quick and cheap communication tool, but e-mail has become the bane of many. It forces us to spend productive time deciding which e-mails must be read, which should be saved, which can be trashed and which merit a reply.

LINDA WHITE


[ 2006-12-06 ]

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Cameron Herold, COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, says "E-mail is killing business. I am an early adopter of technology and believe in e-mail, but there's a time and a place for it." His company has no private offices and holds a seven-minute standup huddle every morning that is typically attended by 220 employees.

Its misuse has caused a backlash among companies like 1-800-GOT-JUNK? "E-mail is killing business," says COO Cameron Herold. "I am an early adopter of technology and believe in e-mail, but there's a time and a place for it."

Too many people, he criticizes, are being sucked into the "e-mail vortex." "E-mail distracts a person's thought process ... and there's no bouncing back of ideas, no facial expressions, no tone," Herold says. To illustrate his point, he suggests reading the following sentence, emphasizing a different word each time: "I didn't say you were beautiful."

In response, 1-800-GOT-JUNK? has resolved to return to simpler times.

HUDDLE UP


"Think of the greatest entrepreneurs, like Rockefeller," Herold says from his company's head office in Vancouver, B.C. "What did they do 90 years ago? They met with their team, broke bread together, went for walks and pushed against offices."


His company has no private offices and holds a seven-minute standup huddle every morning that is typically attended by 220 employees. "People get to know each other," Herold says. "It breaks the monotony and creates energy."

Employees take advantage of e-mail tools that allow them to organize tasks. "We use e-mail as a tool to become more effective," Herold says. "At the end of the day, I list the five most impactful things I can do the next day. The next day, I start with number one. It prevents me from going into e-mail."

E-mailing has become second nature over the past decade or so, but we still haven't learned how to manage it properly, believes Christina Cavanagh, author of Managing Your E-mail: Thinking Outside the Inbox and part-time instructor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

"We're not marrying technology to job processes," she says. "We go to meetings, but still have the capability to have 100 e-mails in a day. I don't believe we have got the system right yet. We're not taking anything away."

Cavanagh encourages organizations to review their e-mail habits and create policies or guiding principles. "E-mail has become embedded in corporate culture, but needs to be managed in a different way," she believes.

"It is a great tool, but we under-manage it. We don't understand how it manages us ... We still don't use it to its full potential. We have to manage this thing down to every last e-mail we send."

Like the folks at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, Cavanagh believes face-to-face conversations are healthy. "E-mail is efficient for many things, but you can't have a conversation or share an idea. It takes longer ... and there's an interruption in between. The flow of discussion does not take place with e-mail."

MANAGING TECHNOLOGY


The popularity of wireless devices like the BlackBerry underscores the importance of managing technology. "It can easily encroach on your personal life. You have to make a conscious decision to say 'no.' It's not the device's fault," Cavanagh says. "There's something inside some of those individuals that says, 'I have to answer those messages.' I don't understand why. People are placing too much importance on the technology."



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