Eliminating email

IT specialists (or, as they like to style themselves, "business technologists") AtoS are looking to eliminate email in the workplace. At least, Chairman and CEO Thierry Breton is making this his goal. From the company's zero-email manifesto:

The volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business. It is estimated that managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week just reading and writing emails. Furthermore, they are already using social media networking more and spend around 25 per cent of their time searching for information.

I'm sympathetic to this point, but AtoS's goal of using social media and collaboration tools to replace email entirely is misguided.

First, it would help to know if the increased use of "social media networking" is for business purposes exclusively, or if it includes workers' personal social media presences. If the latter is the case, then it's wrong to cite this point in favor of moving further in the direction of social media for workplace communication.

More importantly, though, if your job is in sales or some other area that requires instant communication, social media and the old standby, the telephone, might be good replacements. However, one reason so many of us no longer use the phone for routine communication is that our jobs do not require instant communication. Quite the contrary: our jobs require the ability to concentrate on whatever problem it is we're solving. The phone and other synchronous communication media, like instant messaging, are fundamentally unwelcome distractions. The ring of the phone or the chime of the new message is an imperative that must be responded to right now, even if the response is to let the call go to voicemail or to ignore the incoming message. Such distractions break one's concentration and can be significant impediments to progress.

Email represents a good tradeoff, in principle, between the sender's and receiver's priorities. The sender generally wants an answer sooner rather than later, but some respect is given to the receiver's need to get real work done. The problem is that some people don't understand when not to send email. Sometimes covering your ass by passing along barely relevant information isn't helpful. Sometimes you need to refrain from sending that hilarious but totally useless rant to your colleagues. Sometimes you should consider if there's another way to get your question answered than by bothering the person who's supposed to be getting that critical project done.

Breton and those who feel as he does probably see more useless email than front-line workers because management always generates and receives more useless administrivia than people who actually make products or render services. Making "zero email" a goal, though, doesn't address the fundamental problem that some communication simply isn't necessary. Teach people to say only what they need to say, rather than forcing everyone to make communication rather than real work their primary focus.