Smart Teams, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 4Communicate: make less noise

Recently I presented at a partner conference for one of the big consulting firms. I asked the 400 partners in the room how many had more than a thousand emails in their inbox. Over 80 per cent of the room put up their hands. Overfull, poorly managed inboxes are a sure sign of a poor email culture in which not managing your inbox well is the norm.

This new reality has a direct impact on the productivity of everyone in our team, and begs the question: Does the promise of email live up to the reality we experience today?

It is worth thinking about the impact that email has had on our lives and how we work. Email was an amazing innovation in our workplace, increasing our ability to communicate easily with our colleagues, our clients, our friends and service providers. It is instant and inexpensive, and can travel to the other side of the world as fast as to the other side of the room.

But there is also a growing frustration with email, as our inboxes get fuller and fuller, and the volume of incoming emails per day creeps into the hundreds for some of us. Now I often have clients ask me if email is dead, or at least if it is dying. There is much discussion on the Internet about the impending demise of email, and about its replacement by other, more suitable collaboration tools.

The truth is, the very thing that made email so brilliant has also made it a curse: it is just too easy to use.

Ray Tomlinson, the man credited with inventing email, ...