Cool Down: Getting Further by Going Slower

Chapter 2. THE SILO EFFECT

In May of 2000, the then-president of Disney, Michael Eisner, spoke to the graduating class at the University of California at Berkeley to an audience that consisted of many technically oriented new graduates. In an era when the dot-com boom was still hot, he surprised many by saying some rather unflattering things about email. He viewed it as a technology that would pose a danger to the success of companies and organizations, due to the very thing that made it popular—its immediacy. Mr. Eisner said that this would lead to a flood of unscreened emotion, with messages being sent before they were ready and information being mailed to the wrong people.

... email is not perfect. Because it's spread so fast, it has raced ahead of our abilities to fully adapt to this new form of communication. Consider the way we learn about traditional interaction. It takes years to hone communication skills in a classroom, at a party, or when mingling in diverse company. It takes years to learn that there is a way to talk to your peers that differs from talking to your boss or your parents or your teachers or a policeman or a judge. And now here suddenly comes email ... and, to a frightening extent, we're unprepared.

With email, our impulse is not to file and save, but to click and send ... once we hit that send button, there's no going back.^[9]

He was right, of course, and since that speech was made, the environment in which work is done and business transacted has grown, with ...