So here is, better late than never, my post for the Acronym Big Ideas series. The list of possible ideas is huge and awesome, but this one (after MUCH deliberation) was my favorite:
What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally?
At first I almost skipped over this. Somehow sounds like a sort of peripheral no big deal kind of thing, right? But OMG. It’s actually huge. Think about it. If an organization had no internal email system, they would need to communicate, socialize, and work in other ways. Right? Let’s assume other forms of communication are allowed, it’s just literally email that is not. (I’m going to extrapolate that if there is no internal email, then there’s no external email either.)
1. Speed of response could save a ton of time. There might be an internal enterprise microblogging system, like, say, Yammer, where people would be able to fire off questions and get answers immediately.
2. Systems thinking created though transparency of conversation. Maybe most work-related conversation would be visible to all through discussion boards, forums or RSS-enabled sharing like Google Reader, so everyone would be able to find out what everyone else was doing, generally speaking. If people weren’t emailing, there might be more incentive to look there first for answers to questions. (And you wouldn’t be tied to when people are in the office to get those answers either!)
3. More water cooler moments to build culture and community. Maybe more people would congregate in person to talk about stuff. Maybe actual physical office spaces would be organized in such a way as to make that easier.
4. More internal and external collaboration through open workflow. Actual collaborative work, say on committee documents, would have to happen in wikis, Google Docs or “groupsites” where people could work on something simultaneously. Members could participate in these too, of course.
5. More in-house expertise could be leveraged through social taxonomy. (Check out that link to a really good WSJ article about how the search functions of basic social networks could be used to find in-house experts based on conversations they are having and blogs they are writing). People who have expertise could easily be found and dip in and out of open collaborative projects.
6. More brand personality to cultivate. More transparency. More authenticity. If more organizational communication with the community at large was purposefully via Twitter, for example, you could really open the doors to the outside world and give employees a voice.
7. Less wastage. You’d stop spending money on spam-stopping software, on extra bandwidth for email servers, and on IT helpdesk staff who are there to fix perennial email problems. And you’d stop wasting hours sending stuff to spam. In fact you’d stop wasting time waiting for people to get back to you too, if IM’ing was the norm. And when you communicate 24/7 via short messages like with Twitter, you learn to condense what you say into the essence of it – whether serious or social.
I know I’ve mixed up ideas here a bit, but bottom line is, an organization with no access to internal email would surely collaborate more openly, and would find a lot more time to do work, whether in person or in a collaborative online space. And more open collaboration surely means better systems thinking, more opportunity for creativity, and more business agility. Crazy talk? I don’t think so. Want more? How about this? The “email is dead” conversation has been going on a long time now – but I think we’re going to see the tipping point soon. Smart companies are doing this already – so should we.
Now excuse me while I go dig through my heinous email clutter. Sigh.
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27 responses to "What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally?"
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What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://ff.im/-cQLWO
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What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://bit.ly/7CrGhV #socialfish
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What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://tinyurl.com/ybshpjd #socialmedia #news
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What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://j.mp/6ARJNo
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Funny because this was one of the questions that stood out to me, too, when I sorted through the Big Ideas and thought about what I’d like to write about. I still need to write my post, though!
One of the things I’m most psyched about with regard to going back to ASHA is that now my job includes an internal communications component and I’ll be getting involved in the intranet/internal communications/online collaboration. It’s something I always thought was cool but have not had a chance to actually be part of, and I’m very excited about it. ASHA has a full-time intranet manager, Kat Weixel, who has done an incredible job at building a really sophisticated and awesome intranet. She will be presenting at the ASAE Tech conference and I really encourage people to go to her session “COLLABORATE, COMBINE, AND MANAGE: KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL INTRANET ADOPTION” (sorry for the all-caps; I cut and pasted it from the ASAE website like that and am too lazy to uncap it). I myself will, sadly, be on a plane to Vegas that day, but she will be speaking to the exact points you’re making in this post.
Ok, rather than filling up your comment section maybe I’ll go try to write my post…thanks for the inspiration!
What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://bit.ly/7bVrD5
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Lovely, innovative post, brimming with possibilities. Disposing of the idea that it’s impossible to get rid of email, you’ve painted a full picture of work collaborations online and offline.
My other thought is that it would spur collaborative technology development and innovation. We might have seen something like Google Wave much earlier, or an even better version of Wave, Yammer, Docs, etc. I’m guessing the collaboration-innovation-out-of-necessity would also lead to a whole different way of working in teams and company work flow. The possibilities are endless, and you’ve got me thinking about a world without email, as I think of the multitutde of emails piling up right now in my inbox). Yes, right now as I type…
RT @maddiegrant: What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://ff.im/-cQLWO
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@Maggie – that session sounds awesome. We’re hugely into the whole internal collaboration/communication thing – in fact in a past life I was part of a team in charge of setting up an intranet for a huge international company, specifically for communications regarding a merger/acquisition. So I’m acutely aware of how important they can be and how crucial it is to get them right, for communications as well as for workflow.
Can’t wait to read your Big Idea post, btw…
@Debra – thanks so much for your comment! And you’re so right about innovation. I actually realized after I posted this that I hadn’t mentioned Wave, but I know some people (Ben Martin at VAR, for example, for those who know him) who are already using it successfully for internal work.
And you bring up another point, I think, which is that email has turned into such a crutch that organizations wouldn’t dare think of not using it… which may have slowed down a whole potential “wave” (ha) of “innovation out of necessity”, as you say!
I mentioned this idea to some friends last night and one of them had done it. He was President of a $50 million division of a larger company and had six VPs reporting to him and was getting 400 emails a day, about 80% internal. He then intentionally shut the internal mail down. He told people the server would be down for 48 hours for technical reasons (but in fact he just had IT prevent internal email). He said people immediately started meeting and talking more. People who used to fight via email (and cc him) now just worked it out. After the two days he asked his VPs how it went and they explained the work-arounds they did. He said “Good. That’s how we’re going to work from now on.”
RT @maddiegrant: What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://ff.im/-cQLWO
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An idea for stopping the use of internal email – I like it and can really see the benefit.http://ff.im/-cQLWO (via @maddigrant)
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I think the biggest benefit when you ban email is that people get back to relationship building. When you have strong relationships, you can have strong teams. And strong teams can accomplish just about anything.
A few years ago, my former employer (Imre Communications) instituted a “No Email Monday” policy. If we needed to communicate with a client, call or go visit. Need something from a coworker, walk over and talk.
Relationships got stronger. Email bickering stopped. Productivity went up because everyone was in the same room and decisions were made in 2 minutes, not 20 emails.
It’s too easy now adays to fire off an email/tweet/wave and we pass over the opportunity to personally engage and build a relationship.
Maddie – Thanks for taking this question on. This might just spur me to blog again. Maybe.
I LOVE the idea of killing email internally. I think it’s an unproductive time suck, results in far too many misunderstandings, allows staff to hide behind monitors rather than talk, and makes a negative impact on corporate culture. And really, how productive can you be if you have to sort through hundreds of emails every day?
I am huge fan of intranets! I once lead the development of an intranet years ago, and have advocated for and been a team member for the development of them at other associations. Done right, I think they facilitate essential communication and eliminate unnecessary email dialogue. They can facilitate cultural development too, and serve as an internal knowledge database (with good search capability – i.e., the WSJ article you linked to). Email has served us well in many ways, but I think , to the detriment of internal culture, transparency and collaboration.
To your points about physical space, culture, transparency and collaboration, anyone interested in this should take a look at In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work by Cohen & Prusak. Published by HBS in 2001, it still resonates with me today.
Maybe I’ll get into that a bit if I can get a blog post together.
#ASAE Big Idea: What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? — SocialFish http://ow.ly/LHA3 (via @maddiegrant)
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RT @maddiegrant: What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://ff.im/-cQLWO
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Awesome post by @maddiegrant re: removing internal e-mail and the possibilities it would create… http://ow.ly/M39a
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Great, innovative thought, but …
Oh dear. This sounds like my version of hell.
For folks who prefer to ponder, consider, and research before responding, I can’t imagine a more hostile working environment that one where everything is real-time.
What we’re really fighting is poor communication. Email, as a medium generally, gets most of the blame for poor communication since it’s where most of the poor communicators communicate.
But, I suspect these same folks would promptly migrate their same habits to wikis, IM, and twitter if they were forced onto those media. They’d probably invent some new habits, too, once unbound from a decade of email etiquette.
What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://bit.ly/8hgLOI @maddiegrant Internal aspects like social taxonomy
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Ahaha. Davin, that is a great point. I optimistically think, though, that in this kind of open collaborative ecosystem, there would be room for everyone. There would presumably emerge new forms of etiquette too, just like on Twitter now. I don’t think having the capability for real time conversation negates the possibility of reasoned, longer-term, thoughtful discourse. This reminds me of how people thought for a while that Twitter would kill off blogging – but that hasn’t happened, the two types of communication coexist quite happily, IMHO. Thanks for the reality check though!!
I look forward to the day when co-workers are required to speak to each other again! Email has led to individuals working in silos with lack of collaboration. Think of all the exercise we’d get if we had to get up out of our chairs to actually speak to one another through out the day.
RT @SocialFishFood What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email internally? http://bit.ly/7ymygs
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What if association staff weren’t permitted to use email… http://bit.ly/4AytB7 #postrank #nonprofit
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