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Okay we can stop emailing now
February 8th, 2011 William Rice
Technological developments follow each other in rapid succession. But can we really stop emailing? Every day new discoveries are made and new communication tools become available.
Today’s world is completely different from five years ago. Indeed, from last year. It might at some times even feel different from last week. Why if we have all these great, new applications are we still using archaic solutions such as electronic mail, aka email? Why do old habits die so hard?
How old is email, anyway?
In fact, email is older than the World Wide Web. Although the exact date of birth of email is not completely clear, in 1965-1966 the first messages were exchanged between users of computer systems. We can say that today we still use, though it evolved in form and function, an application that is over 40 years old.
Data overload or information overload
The term “information overload” is often heard nowadays. And ever so often in relation to email. Actually, in relation to e-mail it would be more accurate to say data overload, when you are inundated with messages and files that are sent to you and everyone else. The ultimate example is, of course, ‘spam’, junk-mail often offering you proposals to become rich overnight.
Use and abuse of email
Email started as a way to quickly be able to exchange messages, and has fulfilled this role extremely well over the last forty years. What is email actually used for today or how is it abused? Additional, unintended, uses of an email system have developed over the years. This is some of the things people do, besides emailing:
- Archive, storage
- Document management, including versioning
- Social purposes (chit-chat, jokes)
- Discussions (shifting responsibilities, delegating responsibility, passing-the-buck)
Alternative solutions for these use can be found in:
- Enterprise Content Management Systems
- Inter-and intranet forums or communities
- Instant messaging and microblogging
- Task and workflow management systems (web, portals)
- Collaborative tooling (like wikis)
- 8 and… personal contact!
How do we start?
How do we start making the change? How do we end this now familiar habit? Just start by turning off your email. Tip: there is a red ‘x’ in the top right corner, use it. That’s why it is there.
You don’t have to go cold turkey. Just limit your email intake to a few times a day.
Do not send attachments. Instead, upload to the platform that is available to you. Most companies will have an Enterprise Content Management environment by now, or else you’ll find plenty of solutions on the web.
Do not start or engage in lengthy discussions via email. Certainly don’t put everyone in cc. Start a forum or community discussion if you would like to get an answer to something.
Want to speak to someone? Find him or her, call or IM. Don’t send an email to the person who’s sitting at the desk across from you.
The trend is clear: e-mail is no longer seen as a productivity tool, but as an obstacle. The causes are the ever-growing amount of spam, the widespread adoption of other forms of communication and collaboration and the inability of people to effectively deal with emails.
Before email kills us, I say: Death to Email! It is possible, we just need to bring ourselves to say farewell.
Checkout the full press release
Categories: CIO Agenda
William Rice
Since joining Atos Origin in 2006, William Rice has been primarily focusing on the Telecom & Media markets. With a background as a media psychologist, he has a strong interest in the area where new technological developments impact media and people. With his knowledge and experience in this area, William was appointed as the lead for Communities & Social Networking within the global Atos Origin Scientific Community. In this role he has been working on developing a vision for Atos Origin in the area of social business and contributing to the development of Social Business Solutions. This is where the original thought of becoming a zero email company was born. Currently he is responsible for Business Development in Telecom & Media within the Netherlands, and he has a global role as Director of Social Business Solutions.
The punchline to this story occurs at the bottom of the page. Two fields are required to respond to this post. One is your name, and the other is your email address. The fact is, no set of data on customers or potential customers is complete without the email address. Even here, in a post about the obsolescence of email, it is the only datum I am asked for besides my name. The real problem with email is not that it’s outmoded, it’s that the old “spray and pray” approach of email blasting gets less effective every day. Many companies continue to do it because they either don’t have anybody who knows diddley about email marketing software, or they’ve never allotted the time or gathered the data to set this up properly. If you are really serious about abandoning email, wouldn’t it make more sense to ask for a social media login to respond here rather than an email address? BTW, I’m JimAtGoolara on Twitter, in case you’re curious.
Hi everybody,
As I was suggested to by Paul (Mr Albada Jelgersma), I am going to post here as not to intrude in the wrong area of the blog.
Your company just made international news (and I am watching this happening right now from Romania) with the fact that it’ll be the first to banish e-mail as a means of communicating within a large organisation!
Now, besides the fact that I believe that this is most likely a misunderstanding on press’ part, I also now (as an IT manager myself) that there are plenty of reasons to “keep” e-mail working (just think of the time you would spend explaining to more than one person “face-to-face” how to go about saving a “97-2003″ version of an Excel file!)
Paul mentioned that using e-mail as a means of doing “chit-chat” is wasteful and wrong and I personally agree with that and am also aware that Communicator would do that just fine (and it does in my organisation).
So,what is it going to be: is ATOS going to ban e-mail altogether or rather enforce Communicator?
Is this piece of news about “the first company that will ban e-mail” balooney or what?
Great subject William and why am I not surprised that Atos Origin are the first major to break ranks with email. Fancy joining us in a live debate on simply-communicate.com on July 20th when we tackle this very issue in our next social media webinar?
Interesting. I have 4 kids. The oldest is 24. If I send any of them an email, then I need to send them a text to let them know I sent them an email. If I don’t, they will probably not see if for several days. They just don’t use email like I do.
I think that email will die BECAUSE the culture moves away from it. It is an economic thing. Younger people don’t see the value in it as a tool and therefore avoid it. There are other, more intimate ways of using technology to get the information when and where they need it.
Email is private.Big or small business uses email.A tool that is easy and inexpensive.Effective mail managing service will result to reach your business prospect with your clients.
I do believe communication can be much more effective than using email. Will we be able to live without mail within the next three years? I doubt it. But what we will see in the next three years, that we find better ways of communication. Instead of opening up my mail client in the morning, I will open the portal in which I have configured all information relevant for me. This way, i’m sure I do not miss out on any information which is relevant for me as a professional. This will involve a mix of professional and private information, as blending of private and personal is natural (at least for me). We must make sure that the user become the central part in the experience. No good having a radio station, nobody is listing to. Once people see, understand and experience the true potential of communicating in more effecient ways, in which they can reach and be reached by more people in the company, this will become an adictive way of working. We still have to unlock the real potential, which involves training people based on use-cases and organic growth, stimulated by advocates and evangelists. Once critical mass is reached, the social pressure kicks is. So YES, i do believe that the world of information is changing and Atos Origin is taking the correct steps to drive this change.
William,
I work within the Worldwide Partner Organisation at Cisco. I have a specific focus on developing WW Partnerships and go to markets in the collaboration space with Cisco Quad. I read with great interest the press release, as your comments and vision align tightly with our stragegy. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you directly.
Kind regards,
Alan
Cisco
WW Partner Organistion
+44 20 8824 2871
I’m interested to see if it’s going to be possible & how it will be implemented – and if the result will be desirable or if it’s just change for the sake of it. One thing that concerns me is that if you remove email from within the organisation, yet your clients still use it & your employees still use it externally to (for example) mail their team leader when they’re going to be late in, what then? Maybe what’s needed is more of an “Inbox zero” (i.e. David Allen style GTD – see here: http://s.coop/i7s) solution, keeping it as a tool, but not the be-all & end-all as it is. Emails as archive provide a handy, ubiquitous repository of both documents, and records of communication. You can prove, by producing an email from your archive, that you contacted so-and-so and said xyz to them. Unless all your calls are recorded you can’t do this with a phonecall. Unfortunately we lack the space & the quick search ability with corporate email solutions such as Outlook & Exchange that cloud-based solutions like Gmail have. I agree though that we should use it to send links to documents rather than the documents themselves – but if we do that we need to be sure that the documents will be there in perpetuity or at least X years beyond the life of the project. Maybe files should be hosted on a github type server so you have access to different versions? Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens.
Hi
Two thoughts:
1) As long as we are interacting on a daily basis with clients whose culture is even more entrenched in e-mail than our own, and who do not share this vision we will be forced to adopt an e-mail based approach to our business
2) My current client provides no broadband capability and I am based at a location where the only electronic access to the outside world is via GPRS … the beauty of using e-mail is that when I do log-on everything is in one place and using a single communication tool I can manage my life (personal and professional)
So, while I find your hypothesis interesting I don’t believe we will start to leave e-mail behind until both businesses generally – and for AO UK the Public Sector in particular – have reached a critical mass which have progressed to the next level and 3G+ bandwidth is sufficiently widespread to support those of us who live on the move.
Until that happens my rather dull weekly hotel room existence is actually enriched by “cleaning out” my mailbox in the evening time …
Hi Simon,
1: I understand we won’t be able to change the world overnight. I’m realistic enough to see that we will need some time to change this (desire within 3 yrs for Atos internally), but even then we’ll have to keep interaction channels with our clients open, and this will include an email interface ofcourse.
2: As you say, email is just a tool. Other tools should be able to fulfill your specific communication needs. If not, the toolset is not suited to you, and you simple won’t use it, right? But I firmly believe that there are better options out there, right now, and more to come.
Although we are just one company with this ambition, hopefully we’ll set an example and others will follow…
And I’m sure there are nicer, more fun or more useful things to do in your dull hotel room than cleaning out your mailbox? What about writing a book about working at a location where the only access to the outside world is through GPRS
Hi all,
Thanx for this exciting thread.
To me this does not just raise the question of which technology we’ll use to replace emails, whether it will be a blend of integrated social networks, IM, microblogging, SMS, corporate wall, etc…, but how we will use it.
Will getting rid of emails blur even more the line between professional and personal life?
I don’t know. Aren’t we already confusing both when emailing a customer @11:00 pm just to get the reply @11:05 pm?
What I think this will do is make us think why we are interacting with others and how we can do better.
Waow.
Hi Clément,
indeed this is ony partly about technology. A major part of the change will be with people themselves.
About the line between personal and professional life – this has already blurred so much in my opinion. And perhaps, just because of advancing technlogy we’ll be able to stop or even revert and free up some time by being more focused and productive.
As Mr. Breton said in the press conference: he is not happy that so many people after a days work come home, and have to ‘clean out’ their email boxes in the evening time…
Death of email do not mean death of asynchronous one to one exchange of written messages
Just have a look a statistics of SMS on new year’s Eve. Obviously, a lot of people prefer sharing 160 char messages than video or audio…
I do not believe that in the personnal communication area new technologies really canibalize other usages. They often just pile up. Your first answering machine was a revolution : the phone was getting asynchronous! but you’re still picking up if it rings and you’re available.
In that sense I do not agree with William on the fact that wikis, blogs, CMS, and other tools will replace email.
However I’m convinced that the way people manage their asynchronous one to one written messages will surely evolve. I do believe that ‘explicit’ management of these messages in a dedicated and central repository (= the inbox that we struggle to tidy all day long) will disappear to the benefit of more ‘pervasive’ solutions where the message exchange is integrated into applications with broader functions (ex: messages on a social network wall).
A point worth to mention is the usage of email as a ‘notification’ service. It is assumed that people check their inbox often (sometime almost synchronously) and that people ‘get’ emails.
Deepak comment is valuable : I don’t know if you will read this blog comment in the next 2 weeks. But if I push my comment by email, I know that you will have read it by tomorrow 9 AM.
This SC topic has not been kept as a challenge because I was the only one to pick it up last week. I’m definitly happy to see it getting popular.
I guess that we are today in the most stupid scenario. I post on the blog to save an email and you get an automatic notification message…
We still have 3 years to improve !
Nicolas.
Hi Nicolas,
I’m here – a little later than 9.00 AM
about the notification; it is true than many people have notifiers running on their email clients – popups in fact. This is very distracting, research shows it takes 1,5 minute on average to refocus on the task at hand after being distracted by such a popup.
There are other ways of getting the information to people in stead of pushing. But yes, this will require a change in attitude and way-of-working. Plus, there will have to be a single place where people go, and where they know all their information will present.
I keep trying to remember what it was like before email really took a grip. I recall time spent in front of a PC doing productive tasks such as driving CAD tools, writting reports and calculating complex rather than trawling through emails. When I look out of my office at my team I see 50% of their screens looking at email, does this mean 50% of them are being non-productive at that instant. There has to be a better way.
Hi Deepak,
interesting you should raise the point of our ‘ancient’ skill of letter writing. This is in my view a very good ilustration of how the world around us is changing, and a tool like email is ill-suited to facilitate communications in this dynamic and visual world.
Richer communication (voice, video) and different uses of communication technnology – for instance SMS texting and Twitter – are proof of changing needs and habits.
For the other points you raise, I feel there are better alternatives to email to suit your needs. Like the ones I mentioned in the post.
Just curious: why do you need a read receipt to prove you have sent someone an email. Have you ever used this in practice?
But, to conclude, your comment illustrates that by now means we can just ‘shutdown’ email. This is why will do this in 3 years time, to not let people have to go ‘cold turkey’.
Thanks for reply,
I see there are minor differences the way email and collaboration products, being used across countries and across segments like Consulting and Outsourcing.
I had setup few instances of MediaWiki to transfer lot of knowledge projects carry to central repository. Most of the times knowledge remains archived in Inboxes. Wiki helps a lot to manage knowledge in offshore where resources change projects frequently. Do let me know if you need any help on wiki or blogs or discussion forums.
I saw a good quote the other day which said “email is for my parents”
One of my New Year resolutions was to actually bother to hit ‘unsubscribe’ on my ever growing list of spam emails. After 6 weeks of valiant attempts I can honestly say it’s made no difference, other than for me to waste more time having to go to websites to do it!
The thing about email is that its ubiquity forms a nice bridge between the social and the work. I reckon if we replace it then the replacement needs to be able to offer a means for work and personal communication combined. My friendship group used Facebook to organise social things for a few years but slowly migrated back to email – I don’t know whether this was due to overzealous internet controls at somebody’s work or ‘Facebook fatigue’ but ultimately emails mean that everyone gets the message.
If we moved to email replacements, they would need to be able to keep this link – so we could continue to run our many lives and talk to people outside work (as we do with email) using the work IM, webchat or portal. I wonder how bosses and CIOs would feel about this! And for me, if the email replacement doesn’t allow me to do this then how would I know what time to meet at the pub tonight?
@Will: excellent point
I think it is a must for this to succeed that it is accepted that private and professional life can blend. And that personal communication reaches across these realms.
Imagine we have a MyAtos personal information portal, this should be able to include feeds from LinkedIn, Twitter and the likes for me personally.
Social Business Solutions will bridge the gap between the inside and the outside of enterprises.
And on the quote, I recall a similar one. It was in the book Growing Up Digital by Don Tapscott, where he quoted his daughter. She referred to email as a means to communicate with older people, like her brother (who was in college at that time)…
Thanks William, for posting this message on Blog.
Although I am in favor of no email in corporate environment, but temporarily I would act as Devil’s advocate and try to present few scenarios.
Email is not just mode of communication, but much much more. It is become integral part of our life.
I am not sure how many people will go through the comments on the blog, but I am sure if I had written mail, there would have been more readers instantly.
->We send mail to person sitting next to us, because we want him to refer that again and again as documentation.
->May be he/she is not sitting right now next to us.
->That is the proof that I conveyed a message to him. I also have read receipt.
->It is secured, I am assured only the recipient will read that.
->I can broadcasting so many people with one simple mail. It is so powerful. I don’t know who killed NNTP.
->e-mail is only 40 years old, but it represents our thousand year old skill of letter writing. We use all those skills and techniques which we used while writing letters.
On one hand we are saying we should get away from e-mail, but you see Apple and Nokia imitating Blackberry Push Mail features in their mobile devices.
Giant like Google tried pushing WAVE project for more than a year, but Google miserably failed to teach common man.
So we really need to think, if it is not e-mail, what is a solution to our age old habit?
It was a very fascinating and pleasing announcement from Atos Origin to clean up the email mess. However – I am still not convinced fully thatthe new tools will cure the diseases – though surely will cure the symtoms.
The real issues are these – which are mostly rooted in cultaural values:
1. In the old government systems manula files were discussion forums. Some mis-used it by starting a new file, starting new page with a new twist and so on.
2. In emails – cc: was often marked with very different intentions than those were apparent on the surface.
3. Bcc; were more mysterious.
4. Discussing on restricted email – when you should be discussing openly another great twist.
5. Real discussions today go on ouside the email chain and never even captured in an organizational repository
6. If you mix emails with, IMs + Phone Calls + Conference Calls + British style Minitues of Meeting (Ye, Prime Minister) + .xls prepared manually out of faulty IT systems – it will be a heady mix
BUT ATOS ORIGIN MUST BE CONGRATULATED for atleast making move.
Hopefully – the new wave of Social Media model culture and enterprise systems that will get built around that model will change the way we work and run our enterprises and governments in the next few decades.
CS
Any improvement over the current systems
You’ right, over 3000 companies already found out how to boost productivity by collaborating on the right platform. And we will all start communicating that way, it’s the new way to business.
Hi Henny,
interesting fact, do you have a source on that (the 3000 companies)?
[...] wil afschaffen. De verwachting is dat de rest van de wereld daar nog een jaar of 10 over zal doen. William Rice van Atos heeft een aantal tips om geleidelijk e-mail af te bouwen. Zijn eerste suggestie is om de e-mail zo [...]