Corner Office: Uses, Abuses of E-mail

Aug. 28, 2001 -- Technology is a wonderful thing. Thanks to microwave ovens we can overcook food faster than ever. ATMs let us empty our checking accounts in record time. And e-mail revs miscommunication to lightning speed.

At least on the e-mail front, it doesn't have to be that way. E-mail can be a valuable tool. But many e-mail boxes are jammed with more excess than Imelda Marcos' shoe closet. They're stuffed with junk mail, jokes, love letters and sometimes with incendiary material that makes the secret files of the tobacco giants pale in comparison.

Then there's the superfluous stuff we send just because it's easy. (One manager never cured an employee of her habit of sending him e-mail asking him to check voicemail that directed him to notes left on his desk). That leaves only a fraction of material that's actually useful. But you can help turn the tide.

Taking Action

Don't hide behind e-mail. Some managers rely on e-mail in lieu of face-to-face conversation. It's especially tempting when people are off-site, such as telecommuters, vendors or independent contractors.

But using e-mail for everything makes about as much sense as hoping your doctor can make a diagnosis without ever seeing you. Unless you're the Marion Jones of typing, e-mail is too time-consuming. E-mail is more easily misinterpreted because it doesn't allow for give-and-take discussion, and people aren't guided by facial expressions and vocal intonations.

And the more dependent you are on e-mail, the more mysterious you become. Even the Wizard of Oz learned that being the man behind the curtain only gets you so far. Go down the hall, hang out in the lunchroom, or pick up the phone at least some of the time.

Use e-mail intelligently. Just because you can use e-mail doesn't mean you should. Limit your use to concise messages:

Request, confirm or change appointments.

Remind people of deadlines.

Make announcements (for example, which days the office will be closed for holidays).

Let people know when you'll be out of the office (and how to reach you). You can also use e-mail to forward documents that you expect people to file electronically for further reference, such as meeting minutes or budget reports.

Do not use e-mail to:

Ruminate on strategy.

Announce changes in strategy.

Announce major changes (such as mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations or downsizing).

Announce major policy changes (such as vacation time or benefits coverage) or otherwise send information likely to generate questions.

Now that we've said the rule is never, remember that rules are made to be broken. You can use e-mail occasionally for more complex communication, but don't let it become a crutch.

Don't let e-mail become a tennis match. We've all known e-mail debates that have volleyed back and forth more times than a tennis ball at Wimbledon. If an e-mail goes back and forth more than three times — and especially if the distribution list gets bigger — that's a sure sign that the discussion is bigger than e-mail. Call a halt and bring people together to resolve the issue.

Think twice before you click "send." E-mail will not protect you from yourself. Be careful that you are sending what you intended to send, and that you are sending it to the right person. One employee read a general e-mail from the boss and found it insulting. In the heat of the moment she typed an angry comment to her colleague that ended, "Does she think we're stupid?" Imagine her red face when she received another e-mail from the boss that said simply, "Yes, I do." If you can't e-mail something nice …

Don't become dependent. It's hard to believe, but people actually worked for centuries without e-mail. That means they didn't check e-mail from home or while they were on vacation, and they didn't send it during those times, either. Don't expect people to be chained to e-mail 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year. Hardly anything is really that important.

Focus on your own e-mail.Snooping through other people's e-mail is a risky activity.

Real Life Example

Employees from all over the company were inquiring about exactly how much time they had accrued for personal use, such as vacation or sick leave. The HR department charged with answering the questions spent so much time answering the questions that it was becoming a productivity drain. Finally, someone decided to send an e-mail broadcast to employees so that everyone would have current information.

It's easy to see why the idea seemed a good one. But it all went terribly wrong when the person sending the e-mail didn't notice that salary information was being sent along with the leave data. Within moments, everyone in the company knew exactly how much everyone else was making. And within weeks, 20 percent of the workforce was gone. The HR employee who sent the e-mail was, no doubt, among them.

Bob Rosner is the co-author of the No. 1 Amazon business best-seller The Boss's Survival Guide (McGraw-Hill, 2001), along with Allan Halcrow, former editor of Workforce Magazine and Alan Levins, senior partner of San Francisco-based employer law firm Littler Mendelson. Rosner is also founder of the award-winning workingwounded.com and RetentionEvangelist.com. He can be reached via fax at (206) 780-4353, and via e-mail at: bob@RetentionEvangelist.com.

ABCNEWS.com publishes a new Corner Office column every Tuesday.