Pal Rich Tehrani and I seem to be on the same page when it comes to email, as is his colleague Tom Keating.
Since CES I have been using the phrase “email is a broken model.”
To me IM and Voice are far better ways to communicate and to know that the other side got the message and you understand what they are thinking, if the agree or what the action is to take.
Without a response, email does not provide that.
Then there is the issue of the sheer volume of emails. At some points this year I was receiving over 1000 emails a day, and of them about 40 percent required some action. Even at a minute per email, that’s almost seven hours a day of simply dealing with email, so people wonder why I’m working 12-14 hours each day?
Lastly, there’s what I call “acknowledgement emails.” Those are the ones that go to all people on an email that say “great” or “thanks” or “perfect.” Candidly, the only person who needs the reply is the person who originated the email. In my agency I recently banned those types of communications between the 12 team members. They were filling up everyone’s inbox and increasing the server’s size. The result from them was nothing more than a waste in time (people reading and writing them) and money (server space isn’t free.)
Email bloat is a problem and all the other issues make email a broken model for me.