“I have come to realise that if anything will bring about the downfall of a company,
or maybe a country it’s blind copies of e-mails.”
-MICHAEL EISNER, former CEO, Disney Corporation.
Some e-mail facts.
New Zealanders spend nearly two hours a day using electronic mail (Rogan). Australians and Americans manage another eleven minutes while Singapore peaks another twenty minutes. The hottest users in these studies incidentally were those working in IT: Health workers came in second. (Another Australian study also showed that at least 20% of a worker’s time was spent on emails (APS). A New Zealand study, of over 1400 computer users, found that we send on average two messages a day but receive in excess of thirty! This highlights the problems with unsolicited and SPAM type mail. It is estimated that over thirty percent of e-mails are not relevant to receiver’s jobs. Another study put the cost, to a New Zealand middle manager, of opening e-mails at fifteen thousand dollars per year—just to open them!
The other worry about e-mail is their ‘labour-interruptus’. We take on average 25 minutes to get back on task after e-mail interludes. International studies show that an increasing number of organisations (45%) are monitoring staff electronic mail. This big brother approach might be about to change the outcome on other research showing that 90% of staff admit using web sites unrelated to their jobs. In addition only 10% of people said they did not get personal e-mails at work (Yaukey).
The innovation of electronic communication is however a weapon and a noose. Over 85% of those surveyed on the efficacy of electronic mail agree it is improving company communication: but it is also providing more work (Middleton).
Working with stress-mail.
The worst case, during author research into e-mail volume, was 300 a day. A 1996 survey of 1000 business managers worldwide (U.S.A, Australia, U.K., NZ and Hong Kong), revealed their major concern for this millennium as being information overload : they also felt that the internet and e-mails were making it worse (Reuters). A study of business managers in Australia found that nearly seventy percent of them reported stress caused by electronic mail. It gets worse. A Hewlett-Packard commissioned study reported that the IQ scores of knowledge workers distracted by electronic gadgets fell by an average of 10 points. Potheads will be encouraged. Marijuana smokers only lost 5 points! The answer to this issue is of course to have a strategy to handle information and use the skill of filtering: only download or focus on information that is relevant to the problem at hand.
The brain is quite good at this. It has its own SPAM filter situated in the Basal Ganglia and the pre-frontal cortex. We are not unique in this. Even lizards are programmed to focus on what is really important. The challenge for humans is that we can change the programme. If however volume or unnecessary e-mails are getting people down, then management would be wise to set up a committee to establish protocols to deal with them. A number of court cases revolving around misuse of emails points to the need for an organisation to have clear guidelines on internet and e-mail usage. There needs to be a consistency in delivery of these protocols (Henson).
E-mail influences on information.
Generally we are more comfortable using e-mail for bad news for example than fronting up or using the phone (Maday). Thus e-mail may be the best manner of discussing each other’s work frankly. Subjects in one study were happier using electronic mail for delivering negative feedback and less likely to use politeness strategies to distort their message. In face-to-face communication we are more likely to use euphemisms and circumlocution to present news to a face we can see reactions on. Thus e-mail may be more suitable for the delivery of bad news to supervisors or in conflict resolutions situations where people are less sensitive to computer messages. Sadly this is sad, bad, mad territory. A trend emerged for a time when this bad news at a distance psychology caused some sad and indifferent bosses to de-recruit (sack) people via text messages which of course made them mad!
Other studies on e-mails attractions.
The above findings are consistent with another series of studies that suggest people are more honest in e-mails than they are on the phone (Biever). E-mail users are likely to be twice as honest as phone users and more honest than those in face-to-face interactions. Folk using e-mail probably are similar to those who are being recorded on video or audiotape –they know their words are captured for posterity so honesty might be the best guiding principle. In addition lies are more likely in spontaneous communication such as in a phone call while e-mails are more considered (usually). Researchers expected e-mailers to tell the biggest whoppers because they are relatively removed from their victims so to speak. But this was not so. The suggestion is that where information needs to be free of distortion, e-mail might be more appropriate than the telephone.
As an aside lawyers are beginning to see the advantages of trawling through e-mail archives in legal battles, as staff often reveal more interesting and critical material in internal e-conversations than they do in public (Naughton).
What is the etiquette of electronic mail?
Here are some pleas from people attending the author’s time management programmes.
Keep messages brief. There is a temptation to waffle in written communication. After finishing a message read it back and see if you can halve the number of words used.
Check out five.sentenc.es a single page website dedicated to promulgating the policy of e-mails running no longer than five sentences. Make them no longer than an SMS message. This is fine but take care not to use text message language—we aren’t there yet but no doubt it will come. How many of us today use Shakespearean language?
Limit the use of graphics. It is the nature of graphics to need a lot of computer grunt. Over use of graphics can use up memory in computers that can upset receivers –so be sparing in use of such a tool If you need to use them checking on memory capacity first would be courteous.
Whenever possible paste the contents of attachments into the body of the message. As humans we generally prefer to scroll than to click so this can work to your advantage in getting and keeping readers’ attention. It is mortifying to realise that your readers’ personal spam-alert is active in a nanosecond—so you’ve got three seconds at most to get into their working memory.
Learn impulse control. At one time the world’s highest paid executive Michael Eisner (CEO Disney) warned his staff about resisting the urge to send messages without checking them. He says that in the hard-paper world if we wrote a letter that was rude, or even inaccurate we might’ve left it on our desk overnight, and on return the next morning, binned-it or rewritten it. “But with e-mails, the impulse is not to file it but to click and send.”
And there is more: he says that the threat of the situation is compounded by blind copying of either the intemperate mail (or any mail) to people who should not have received it in the first place. Unless you are an approved e-mailer –expect more of this protective process. In the future we might need to register our intent to send an e-mail!
Stay friendly. Electronic mail began informally and there are moves to formalise them which would be a pity. However having said that early e-mail tended to be streams of consciousness without punctuation syntax correct spelling context or formatting. Lately they have become more structured and that is a positive move but work at keeping them relatively informal –address people as is common with Hi and Hullo and Goodbye but avoid any pressure to return to Dear Sir and Yours Faithfully. Enchantingly some Auckland law firms and other professionals are channel electronic mail through a secretarial system. This is to ensure that when the lawyers for example charge out for advice in the e-mails, clients feel they are dealing with people who are literate—is this the return of the typing pool?
Consider adding address details last. There have been a number of notable cases where incomplete e-mails have transmitted when the send buttons have been inadvertently pushed –absent minded behaviours or accident.
Spell check. If using Microsoft F7 pops up a spell check and this can be set for automatic appearance if required. If using attachments, such as word documents, grammar etc., is usually looked after automatically.
Send your other address details. After preparing details in the signature file, insert in documents at conclusion and ensure to include your D.D.L, mobile phone and snail-mail addresses. This saves time for receivers who may need to touch base with you by other means.
Other ideas for e-care.
1. Check the in-box twice a day. Be careful not to allow the e-distraction interrupt your prioritized work. Set aside appropriate times when you will clear your box. Good time managers turn off the ‘you have mail’ signals to avoid the interruption to thoughts and focus. Check out our chapter 29 for further ideas on interruptions.
2. Delete joke e-mails or create a file for them so they are off your immediate desktop. Be careful in what you send others in this territory. In 1997 three New Zealand public servants lost their jobs after a court case that had the judge condemning their sending of “hundreds of offensive messages’, many of them anti-women. In 1999 the New York Times sacked 23 staff for emailing distasteful material, while the huge energy business Chevron paid out four million dollars in law suits from staff complaining about sexual harassment in electronic mail. Remember that forensics can track even deleted –emails so take care with your messages at all time. Your words may come back to haunt you.
3. Lead your in-box. Create a personal file for junk mail or inconsequential mail you might checkout one day. New software tools offer an intriguing assortment of managing-inbox tools. Some will prioritise Outlook messages by importance as recognized by your personal history; sort out e-mail strands relative to your major work projects or even turn e-mails into appointments or jobs and new feed you information about significant clients and their achievements etc. By all means create a file for urgent but remember to re-visit the file!
4. When away for a considerable period of time set up a return message -- “I’m away. Mail will be routed to Betty Windsor.” This may allay your fears, while away, that when you return you will return to a stack of electronic mail. Also it means clients and others can possibly move things along in your absence. It goes without saying that Betty needs to be fully briefed.
5. Blind carbon copy (BCC) means no one knows who has received it apart from receivers. Sometimes this is welcome as e-mails loaded with hundreds of names does not win friend and influence anyone except Spammers.
6. Use the flag system for high priority items but don’t over use as it will eventually lose its effectiveness if every item is so flagged –this is what has happened with secret for example (secret, which means don’t tell, became in sequence; top secret: top, top secret: “For your eyes only”: and now, “If we tell you this, we’ll have to kill you!”)
7. Some web sites for bells and whistles of interest: safe message (www.safemessage.com) sends encrypted messages so you can stop the recipient, copying, saving, forwarding or printing. Disappearing (www.disappearing.com) where you can set up messages that crumble into electronic dust after a pre set time.
8. To reduce time opening e-mails consider placing short messages in the subject line followed by ‘eom’ (end of message).
9. Cut back on e-mail ping-pong by offering others the alternate-advance influencer: ‘Shall we meet at 2pm or 4pm’, rather than the open to discussion: ‘When shall we meet?’
10. Respond to mail you can’t get to for a time with a short acknowledgement and timeline for your return missive.
11. Make your messages brain friendly with a clear subject line; starting your script with your main point and using bullet points (no more than five maximum at one time). Also use bold headlines and white space to encourage the brain to ‘read on’.
12. Consider a weekly e-mail free morning for the in-house team. This would mean more phone calls, face to face meetings and maybe even quiet time for ‘flow’. Sadly it may not work with external e-mail although using the disciplines mentioned in this chapter some control should be wrestled back.
13. Consider asking your IT gurus to work on changing those receipt confirmation required messages to automatically dispatching a message suggesting if things are urgent phone immediately for fast response.
Electronic mail’s future.
E-mail is literally replacing postal mail, a service that can be traced back to 1657. At that time the British state took control of sending letters --a right, most states still claim today. Later in 1840 Rowland Hill introduced a postal system whereby anybody could get a letter delivered for a penny. Postage stamps arrived a year later. Today, because e-mail is literally instantaneous, post has become by comparison snail-mail and of course the state is beginning to loose control of the mail. Electronic mail is showing an exponential explosion. In 2010 it was estimated that in excess of 1.175 billion people use the internet.
The growth of extranet will further damage post as businesses learn to handle many of their interdependent transactions electronically. The extranet uses internet tools to generate access into an internal network. Customers are thus able to access your system for ordering, checking, product information, account payments or literally anything the host agrees to. Locally it is estimated that TelestraClear, in an earlier incarnation of Clear Communications, saved 2.7 million dollars per annum after investing in an extranet (Bland).
Not that all have converted to e-mail as officials at the Bill Clinton Presidential library attest. The curators of the repository of the history of the Clinton years say that they will eventually store over 40 million e-mails sent by the former President’s staff. Bizarrely however there are only two actually sent by the boss himself. One was a test transmission: the only person in history to have received an e-mail from President Clinton is John Glenn the first American to orbit the earth who repeated the feat in 1998 as an older astronaut.
A final e-word.
The power of e-mail and the World Wide Web is obvious and not only has it changed our way of doing business it has also changed the nature of many of our relationships. One study that gave sixteen groups decision-making tasks either on e-mail or at face-to-face meetings found that the electronic problem solvers were superior. Not only did they come up with better solutions to a series of challenges but were more “socially orientated” than personal groups. Incredibly they had bonded better! (Walther). However the author’s research suggests that those teams who also met regularly, in addition to sensible use of their tools, outperformed teams who never met personally.
Relationship Services in New Zealand report an increase in the number of people falling in love through e-mail, chat rooms and the like. Not all such relationships have worked out as expected. There have been some horrific assault cases when women have met up with predators using chat rooms to find victims. Probably the most unusual outcome occurred after a meeting in the Chinese city of Luzu. Two web surfers corresponded for two years before they supposedly fell in the love with each other and decided to meet. They picked a restaurant in the city. As they stared at each other across the tables they realised they knew each other. They had actually been living with each other for more than a decade –they were man and wife! (BBC World News)
Personality tips for e-mail.
“You have to be zen like. You have to let go of the need to know everything completely.”
-JERRY MICHALSKI (Social media consultant USA)
“The Problem with intelligent agents that stand between you and interruptions is that if they get it wrong and don’t interrupt you, even just once, there may be a high price to pay.”
-JENNIFER LAI IBM software engineer working on IM Savvy a system that tells people you’re busy by sensing your mouse patterns.
“How do you stop your mail partner reading your e-mails. Label the folder Instruction Manual.”
-BLOGGER on lifehacker.com.
Golden nuggets on electronic mail.
Use e-mail as a weapon, don’t let it become a noose!
Check that e-mail is appropriate it may be better to meet with people or phone them.
Learn impulse control
Keep them short.
If desperate consider e-mail bankruptcy –delete all your message and start again.
E-mail time tips.
- Don’t let the in-box interrupt you. Plan your checking time.
- Give e-mails structure but don’t formalise them.
- Spell check all e-mails.
- Set up a protocol with other staff on usage and abusage.
- Use attachments for documents that need more polish.
(References on request)
The author has long known that businesses where people not only enjoy the work but each other, form the best and most productive teams in history. Organisations that begin their work-day with humour or positive exercises or even meetings with warm-ups are amongst those that have changed the world with their creative problem solving—just think Amazon.co and here at home the 42 Below Vodka Co. Teams that can joss with each other or leg-pull or play around things are not only doing what comes naturally but they can build amazing cultures. Humans are hot wired for play, and lateral thought: there is even a brain area called the Parietal Lobule where incongruence is processed. Positive energy correlates with better conflict resolution and negotiation outcomes, let alone improving relationships- how many people laugh their way to divorce counts.
Studies in India and the USA show that three weeks of laughter yoga can greatly improve performance at work and reduce stress and lift resilience. (It can also improve lip movement- your upper lip is not so ‘stiff’ anymore.) Other research has shown that folk engaging in laughter yoga gained reduced frequency of respiratory infections such as the common cold or flue. We’ve known for some time that singing in a group can lift mood, increase life span and reduce the likelihood of depressive episodes—similar outcomes appear to come from laughter sessions: plus with the added benefit that you don’t have to know the words of a song.
