Email is dead, Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg declared famously last November.
<Copied from my Intranet post on March 2012>
Thierry Breton, the CEO of Atos,
the French information technology
company, one of the largest IT companies in the world according to Forbes,
agrees and acted to control the use and abuse of emails in the
company.
“There is no question there are a lot of
useless emails and loss of productivity. When there’s an email on your
BlackBerry you end up answering it even though it may be less important than
what you are doing. It’s a habit.” Senior-level executives and CEOs are supposed
to be great at managing their time, but they are vulnerable when it comes to
email2. An average business user responds to over a 100 emails daily,
recent studies have found. Atos estimates that many employees spend 15-20 hours
every week just checking email, of which only 15% are really useful to them or
customers. But employees still trawl through the rest for fear of ‘missing out
on something’.
You’ve got mail–not. Employees of tech company Atos will be banned
from sending emails under the company’s new “zero email” policy. CEO
Thierry Breton said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per
day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the
company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months1. The goal is
focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and
partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent
in six months. “We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast
polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal
lives,” he said in a statement when first announcing the policy in February. “At
[Atos] we are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations
took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial
revolution.” The company says by 2013, more than half of all new digital content
will be the result of updates to, and editing of existing information. Middle
managers spend more than 25 percent of their time searching for information,
according to the company
Good, Bad and Ugly of Emails
“We use
email for archiving data, which is a bad way to do it. We use email to send
global information to everyone — this is also a bad way to communicate; we use
email to manage processes, which is a bad way to do it. We have many bad usages
of email.” Atos CEO lamented!
I agree.
1. Emails are the source of business document repository for me and others2. Business Processes are Chain Emails. Decision tracking is synonymous to email chain of any conversation3. Confidentiality & Control is Email TO or CC list! Breach of confidentiality is BCC or inappropriate forwarding!4. No surprise, emails are the company’s most sought after service! Mail boxes fill-up their 500MB quota (for everyone?) and Mail servers and capacity is the “IN-THING”!5. Emails go around calling people for everything from a board meeting to sharing a cup of tea!
Emails
revolutionized communication when they became popular in 1990-95. They killed
the Paper-Mail successfully. I last wrote a letter to my mother in 1996! For 15
years, they rule this world!
I don’t see
significant difference in email capability since 1996. This is possibly ONLY
high-tech gimmick that remained so STATIC! We seem to love the OLD
WINE.
SURELY, the
Email has outlived its life and like PLASTIC is now plaguing the efficiency of
thought, communication and conduct!
KPI of Information Maturity
Any business that is PERFORMING effectively is deemed to be
“efficient” in its Information management IF and ONLY IF,
1. Emails (internal) are redundant! AND2. PowerPoint is made defunct!
Digital World
Take this simple
questionnaire and see for yourself the changing world of
business
1. Everything created at work is now some kind of digital content (Yes/No)2. Barring Plants, Machinery and such Physical Assets rest of business process is creating, organizing and administering digital content. (Yes/No)3. Organization structure, Roles and Assignments are ‘create, access, review and approve’ rights on Digital Content (yes/No).4. All process related work is exercising the rights on one or more Digital Content (Yes/No)5. All decisions are determining Go or No-go on a decision tree defined on a digital content (Yes/No)6. Business Contexts (Assets, Functions, Attributes etc) are taxonomic classification of one or more digital content (Yes/No)7. Security (barring physical search and security) with its cameras, ID-Cards, access-doors etc. is digital content (Yes/No)8. Safety, Health, Environment translates to digital content of some observations, measurements or records (Yes/No)9. KPIs, BSCs, SLAs all are digital measures (Yes/No)10. Business Processes, Systems, Data, Roles, Contexts – all are digital contents (Yes/No)
1990-2012 the
world of computer science and the technology that supports digital contents has
radically changed
Bullock Carts and Hydrogen Cars
Most of the
management concepts, diagraming methods, workflow mechanism, and hierarchical
taxonomies are from the age of Bullock Carts!
They may
co-exist on the streets of India, but to pursue a program to implement bullock
cart transportation model in 2012 will be preposterous
Expanding Email
based work culture is the same!
Entire world of Business
Information and Digital Content CAN be elegantly and completely handled with
better technologies. Contextual Business Information Frameworks (BIF) and
expansive databases with analytical intelligence is the PRESENT and the
FUTURE
Inefficient Technology is Death knell
What we do today
needs to
· Conscious Learning from the PAST· Alert Understanding of the PRESENT· Intelligent Appreciation of the FUTURE
With Information
Technologies changing at ‘exponential rates’ and successful businesses riding on
‘appropriate’ technologies – it is imperative
to be innovative.
Choice of
appropriate Technologies that wean out of Emails and PowerPoint is needed to
face the Future. KPI that clearly discourages these tools must be part of BSC or
other maturity measures. Information Maturity must be measured and pursued to
its logical excellence!
Following methods of a Leader of
20th Century in
21st Century is not wise.
References
1.
http://blog.gosocio.in/ Source : http://news.yahoo.com/tech-firm-implements-employee-zero-email-policy-165311050.html
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