Talk to people instead of e-mailing them.

I have been a business professional for a long time.  I have been working in technology for two decades.  In that time, the world changed radically for the better and for worse.  What has not changed is the time suck which is e-mail, and how it is cancer for many organizations.

E-mail is as old as the internet.  Before the creation of the World Wide Web, the most common use of the internet was swapping files and sending e-mail.  Business organizations saw the application's utility and used it to create a way he number of business memos.  What happened is the creation was a flurry of messages through companies as people used the tool to improve communication.  With the advent of e-mail and voice mail systems, managers hoped the worker bees in the cubicles would not ignore important information.  According to my experience, the cobra effect raised its nasty head.

The information moved more smoothly, but it created an incredible amount of noise that drowned out the necessary information. Instead of business goals, office gossip, invitations to lunch, and memes began to clutter up inboxes.  The torrent of information became a tsunami as network systems were tuned to send SMTP messages.  Today, every file dropped into an FTP folder, a work item changed in JIRA, or a help desk ticket created generates an e-mail to provide you with a friendly reminder.  Today, a business professional has to act on hundreds and thousands of e-mails, both trivial and critical, mail both trivial and critical is overwhelming. It has created the inbox zero phenomenon and a perfect storm of professional apathy.  All e-mails have the same relative importance, so it is easy to ignore messages equally.  Managers have used the folder routing features of Outlook and Gmail to ignore inquiries and information from subordinates quickly.  Help desk people with a particular form of sloth will ignore complaints for days.  The ability to use email as a deflection tool seems to be a credible reason why productivity has been relatively stagnant over the last decade.

What makes e-mail so insidious is that it is a written record of an organization's conscious and unconscious mind.  An e-mail gives an employee an alibi, creating the impression that they spoke up about important issues, even if management ignores that information.  Sexual harassment and gossip exist in the company e-mail database like an improvised explosive device waiting to be dismembered.  Finally, criminal and unethical behavior are spelled out for prosecutors and journalists to expose.  This is why the software companies still use the e-mail database for Enron test e-mail products.  The criminal conduct and general idiocy of the Enron organization live forever.  Technology, human resources, and public relations professionals use the Enron e-mail database to simulate what might happen in an actual corporation.

E-mail is not a tool for clear communication but a device for obfuscation.  It is the written equivalent of snowflakes coming together to create a blizzard of awfulness.  Individuals compensate with texts sent between private phones, executives, and other essential people with multiple phone conversions.  Critical information is harmful and challenging to share and keep secrets for personal gain.  Finally, business professionals spend three to five hours monitoring and authoring e-mails daily and authoring e-mails.  This is ridiculous; instead of helping customers, innovating the business, or solving problems, we do ticky-tacky work by monitoring e-mail.

One of the agile principles says that face-to-face communication is preferable to other forms of interaction.  So, my warning to any scrum master or agile coach is to pick up the phone, call people, and speak to them.  Get up from your desk, walk over, and talk to people rather than hide in your office.  Use video conferences and insist that everyone turn on their camera so that we can read body language and know they are paying attention.  A lousy organization will not change if we insist on doing the same thing redundantly.  It is time to reconsider e-mail and how we use it.  It cannot hurt to try.

Until next time.