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Lee E. Meadows, PhD.
Professor of Management –
Authored: Silent Conspiracy
& Silent Suspicion
Email is not only tool in communication arsenal
At a recent lunch setting with several managers attending a
‘Managing Productivity’ seminar, the conversation did its usual
follow-the-bouncing-complaint before finally landing on a discussion piece that
managed to consume the remaining time. The love/hate relationship with the
marvels of email as a communication tool slowly evolved into a
‘can-you-top-this’ comparison of how many were sent, received, answered,
stored, copied and possibly deleted. As much as they groused about the burden
that comes with never getting through their email, to a person, they agreed
that it was the most effective method of corporate communication. There are
many who would have let the discussion end at that point, but the question
‘What makes it so effective?’ was left dangling around the dessert.
- “You
can talk to hundreds of people at once.” said the financial
analyst from a mid-size automotive supplier.
- “I
can use it to work from home,” replied the produce manager
from a popular grocery chain.
- “It’s
easier than having to explain things over and over again,”
snapped the distribution manager from a pharmaceutical company.
- “Having
access to instant information,” lamented the sales manager
from a regional products group.
With five minutes to go before the lunch ended, a
recruitment coordinator from a small contracting company said, “Sounds like email is very efficient, I
don’t know if any of us have made an argument for effective.”
When employees wax eloquently about the beauty of sending an
email to the person in the cubicle behind them or the escalating debates that
rage in cyberspace because it’s hard to measure tone of voice, facial
expression and general demeanor from a simple email or the missed lunch date
because someone forgot, in an unconscious purposeful way, to check their email,
then the question of effective is truly left unanswered.
Email is one more tool in a box of tools designed to assist
the very real process of communication. Just as robots assist the production
worker and computers assist the office worker, email assists the average worker
when it is used for the right task. It was never meant to address all aspects
of human communication, just the ones that needed to be more efficient. The
classic depiction of the overworked manager, with stacks of memoranda piled
ceiling high in the inbox, has been replaced by an even more overworked manager
staring bleary-eyed into the computer screen. Meantime, all the opportunities
that come with connecting on a personal level are lost as quickly as it takes
to hit the ‘delete’ button.
There is strong agreement among organizational and
behavioral researchers that we spend the majority of our living time at the
workplace. Now, a majority of that work time is spent with eyes fixed on a
computer screen growling about the most recent list of email senders all
waiting for a quick response. Save your eyes, fingers, shoulders, back and
posterior by….
·
Going to
someone’s cubicle, sitting down and actually discussing an issue face to face. This act
will probably startle the person into having an actual conversation with you.
·
Scheduling
a planned email break with other colleagues. Don’t discuss anything
related to email, but focus on issues that are family-related or represent a
common humorous interest (i.e. reading, golf, the
·
Contact
someone you haven’t spoken to for months and agree to meet them for a
let’s-get-caught-up lunch. This activity helps reinforce that there are other
people in the world besides the ones you see at work.
·
Attend a
‘Communication Skills’ workshop at a location away from work. Event the
best communicators find time to improve on a skill that has made them
successful. No doubt you could also use the time away from work.
Email has found its place in the organizational setting;
make sure that place is between computers and not the people you need to help
you succeed.