Blogs
Highlights
Categories
Tags
Analytics B2C Big Data Bring your own device Business Business Models Cloud Computing Collaboration Command and Control Consumerization Data Delivery Models eCar Economy Facebook Finance help desk Innovation Internet IT Leadership IT Management IT Operations J2016 Journey 2014 London 2012 Media Mobile Mobile Payments Mobility New Media Open Innovation Organizational Change Payments Predictive Analytics Product Lifecycle Management Security Smart Mobility Smarter organizations Social Media Social Networks Social Organization Sustainability Sustainability Tracks Trends Video Vision White Papers Working Environment Workplace
Achieving a zero email culture: is bureaucracy a showstopper ?
December 21st, 2011 Hubert Tardieu Tags: Data Pollution, Enterprise Social Network, Over-Bureaucracy, Social Organization
Posted in Zero Email |
As pointed out in my recent blog ”The Grail Quest for Social Organization”, zero mail is not an objective in itself but the recognition that companies are suffering from email overload.While the use of social media has become common place in the consumer space at the expense of email usage, the enterprise is still struggling to come to terms with the unstructured nature of these platforms.
In the last weeks many bloggers have commented on Thierry Breton’s repeated announcements on Zero Mail and I am glad to see the industry is adding to the debate. We need this debate to continue to help improve the working environment and reduce data pollution.
In his post ” Why will “zero Email” policies fail? Bureaucracy?” Brian Prentice from Gartner concludes : “Email doesn’t erode productivity and encroaches work into our personal lives, bureaucracy does “. He rightly presents email “as one-to-one/one-to-many communication system radically increasing the ability of people to seek assistance, create and delegate tasks, update colleagues and coordinate activities”
Email started as a democratic tool within bureaucratic organizations. It is not the case anymore and organizations have put in place self defense mechanisms helped by CC, BCC and REPLY ALL
- Email overload is creating a new burden on the digital age worker’s ability to master their environment where productivity is hindered rather than enhanced..
- actually email is the embodiment of modern bureaucracy as it structures all relationships in the office and, as for all systems, the email evolution curve has reached the point where the system brings more disadvantages than advantages.
- People naturally like the fire and forget nature of the email exchange having dealt with the matter … at least until it comes back.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with asynchronous communication and yes we love email BUT
- It is not asynchronous anymore as it becomes a real time games of email ping-pong generate an ever growing pile of emails to manage.
- The issue is (1) data deluge, (2) time consumption or should that be time control given that there is always a choice.
Let us not confuse the syndrome ”email overload” and the root cause of email itself: a need for cooperation to complement and lubricate the enterprise processes established to enable the organization to deliver in line with its objectives.
Bureaucracy is associated to a rigid application of standard processes and rule based organization of work. Preventing “over-bureaucracy” means encouraging initiative and promoting an entrepreneurial attitude in the organization.
“I am convinced that Social Organizations will have to find the right balance between formal processes often described as “Lean” organization and more cooperation to encourage individual and collective initiatives.”
Cooperation is about the exchange of information within a community. Communities can be created for common interest or for common purpose.
When the community is created for common interest, members share values, skills, experience and are encouraged to exchange to get more knowledge and gather other members’ opinion.
When the community is created for common purpose, it will have visible and agreed objectives endorsed by the company. In their recent book “The Social Organization” A Bradley and M McDonald are recommending differentiating between “grassroots communities” where the momentum is strong enough between members to exist (and the company only needs to approve the purpose) and “sponsored communities” which are initiated and animated by the company itself. It could be argued that the former is more likely to succeed than the latter as volunteers are more likely to be self-motivated by the task in hand. It is therefore essential that “sponsored communities” have the sponsorship of the organization but without the bureaucracy.
“Sponsored communities” will therefore concentrate both the risk and the reward of the social organization to the enterprise: too top down driven, too rigid, too oriented to formal reporting will kill their purpose and they will be rejected by their members. Properly balanced as a necessary complement to enterprise processes, they will help to detect talent, to generate consensus, to allocate tasks and to update colleagues. The community moderators, a role yet to generalize in social organization, will play a key role by showing no complacency on the purpose of the community but flexibility in its execution.
Supporting cooperation through the new Enterprise Social Network is the next frontier. The tools which can help are not document centric; they have to be people centric.
Two challenges have to be addressed by them:
- Make the best use of the individual attention, given his/her context(location, schedule, device used as a terminal). Attention mismanagement is clearly a factor of stress and overload.
- Act as a fully integrated environment which can remain available whatever terminal you use (PC at work, Smartphone on the move, PC at home) and give access to all communication tools (Phone, Unified Communications, Rssfeed, video,..) without interrupting your session involving members of your community and documents.
The bet of the Social Organization is that cooperation within communities associated with appropriate processes will create a new style of organization and a new style of management more suitable to the digital generation. In the Social Organization, we shall communicate through the enterprise social network across the various communities we belong to, reducing the usage of mail to formal communication.
So, if bureaucracy is the disease, do not just blame it for the fever but administer the proper treatment.
Thanks to mr Fisserman for the usage of “No Mail Please” image.
Tweet
Hubert Tardieu
After 27 years in Sema then SchlumbergerSema then Atos in various positions including Global Telecom, Global Finance, Global Systems Integration and Global Consulting, I am today the advisor of Atos CEO helping him to form the vision of what will be our world in 5 years from now. (More to be found on http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Tardieu ). To help me in this task we have formed in June 2009 a 100 + members Scientific Community where the best engineers of Atos have built together their vision which we have called “Journey 2016-Enterprises without boundaries” available on Atos site (as well as 20 + white papers.)
An ambitious plan, but certainly achievable. Good to see to that Atos is taking the lead in this movement, where I’m sure others will scramble to follow. If you would be interested in purchasing the MyAtos.com domain name for your platform, please do contact me. Good luck with your endeavours.
Hubert,
It was a pleasure speaking with you today. As discussed, my team is excited about your blog posts and the “Zero Email” initiative to avoid suffering from email overload. I believe that Email is going the way of snail mail. Entering an email address, typing in some sentences and hitting “send” is going the way of writing a letter, sticking it in an envelope and dropping it off at the post office. According to comScore, our next generation of teens aged 12-17 are using email 31% less and 18-24 year olds 34% less. Gone are the days of using email addresses, subject lines, and well composed email messages. The young’ins are all about sending texts, BBMs, or Facebook status posts to get their messages across to others. I find this an obvious sign of email’s demise and a key factor that made me align myself with IGLOO Software as our leaders have had this vision for several years now. I would be delighted to collaborate with your team to explore ways we can work together to help Atos achieve your target of ditching email in 18 months!
A very valuable contribution to the discussion.
The concerns that can be heard increasingly in the discussion are based on a very common situation. Nowadays email is the door to the company’s flow of information and gossip to most employees. You can be sure that you are linked to the broad information about what’s going on, just by the fact that it is spread unspecifically. How often do I get important information “by accident”? What if this changes? Will I be cut from the stream of information?
Like in any kind of revolution, before it starts only a few can imagine how it will be afterwards, to most it’s a thread. It’s important to make the majority curious, make the ideas tangible and of course avoid the impression, that information will become an instrument of power even more than it is today already.
Hi Hubert – thanks for taking this on, it is truly an exciting topic and one that will expand rapidly through this decade. The transference of information is the key objective; how it is being transferred currently is not working. It worked in the early days, when we were all mesmerized by the speed at which we could exchange thoughts, ideas, actions. Unlike many other products that have evolved and expanded, email has not, regardless of all the search capabilities, etc.
The future is depositing information where it needs to be, rather than sending it in a virtual envelope, where the processing of such information is out of our hands. I’m eager to join the ranks of those working to make improvements to information exchange and retention.
What tools is Atos using exactly to replace internal emails. Is Atos working on a system?
I’d like to get more information on possible alternatives.
Thanks!
Chris Dyer
Along with building people-centric tools that help users manage attention and are accessible on multiple devices, organizations need to drive the adoption of those tools. Employees are comfortable with e-mail, often do not understand the benefits of more social approaches (perceiving only risk), and do not necessarily view the status quo as inefficient. One approach we used to address the this when I was at IBM was to create materials that were short, funny and easy to share — and which clearly highlighted the issues with current communication strategies, while providing realistic solutions using social business tools as models for behavior change (ref: http://goo.gl/Rok5w). This was just one element of a strategy aimed at driving and enabling behavior change — something which is at least as challenging as developing the right tools.
interesting ideas on emails being redundant due to social/commercial/business networking. The idea of working to a common cause under a single umberella giving the users an instant fix, that is “social networking” as apposed to emails brings to mind the power of this new technology tool with respect to the recent social changes brought about by social network sites. Like the Arab Spring, this demonstrated how many people can join together under the same umbrella (i.e.a common goal) outside the influence of government controls to build a new society.It is clear that social network sites can motivate and inspire people to feel inclusive and an a party to the network experience in real time and this certainly helped to get things done, imagine this social uprising happening via an email!
However as in all things this tool can also be used to undermine and corrupt like the London lootings in 2011. This also relied upon social network sites to inspire and group together like minded people under the same umbrella, in this instance to allow greed and corrupted minds to prevail influencing others to be involved and to adapt to changes for a common goal.
There will always be a fine balance between social network sites being used for good or evil. Having this tool in a buisiness environment, will not change this, so like it or not in the business domain social network tools will require a level of control to minimise the risks of sensative information being passed to the wrong person and because of it’s speed even more difficult to limit it’s affect once the users are motivated, making the buisiness / social network a potential mine field of lost company and custmer data and confidence, business relies upon.
Will this potential risk to business out weigh the potential advantages? only time will tell, if we are courageous enough to enter this “Brave New World”
Hubert, you are so right. For me the challenges with email are wall paper covering much deeper cracks in the orginsations culture and ways of working.
Would be delighted to talk about the email challenge in more detail in the new year and how I have been working with other international organisations.