Collapsing under the real weight of the imaginary paper in your faux-paperless office?
Wondering why it takes 47 arse-covering replies, with 57 witnesses known in modern speak as “cc“’s, before anything gets done?
Is your inbox your greatest genuine nemesis?
That’s because 99% of the time email is not communication. It's semi-anonymous speech-making.
Most of what we really do as humans requires backwards and forwards interplay. It needs the checking of comprehension and authenticity… that certain something that indicates there has been a casual covenant made. There’s been a promise and some understanding.
Anything less is too easy to ignore. (That’s why we still require each other to actually turn up to funerals and weddings.)
Upper management know this. It’s why they spend bundles of money on meeting each other, face-to-face in exotic places (well, one of the reasons) so they know that the business can go on. They’ve looked each other in the eye.
In my opinion, email should never be the driver of actual work, just the filing system… yet it is inexorably the main tool of business.
Join me in my new, poorly subscribed movement: One year without email. Just the phone and the fax. Let’s cut communication back to what it really should be about… people talking to each other, and then swapping the contract.
Oh, and shoddy blogs.
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