Is There a Cure for E-mailitis?
An epidemic so severe it makes even a dreaded computer virus seem like a waning common cold
ONE RESEARCHER suggests that 7 trillion e-mail messages will enter in-boxes next year, although many of us sense we personally receive that many already. The e-mail epidemic rocking our offices readily demotes such computer viruses as the dreaded Melissa of late to the status of a waning common cold. This e-mailaise may, in fact, be incurable, with commercial, corporate and personal e-messaging expanding almost exponentially every day.
Like all good commercial opportunities sporting an “e” up front, new Internet messaging and e-newsletter companies are born nearly every day. A “small” firm, by industry standards, can readily generate 500,000 ostensibly personalized corporate messages a week for a single client at nominal cost
Venture capital dollars chase the e-messaging space with ardor. And investment capital is easy to come by these days for those with an “e” in their name.
Businesspeople deluged daily by virtual waves of e-drivel anxiously await the arrival of those who will work to eradicate e-mailitis. And while we ache for signs of progress in the search for a cure, many strains of the disease have already emerged.
Acronymia. Acronyms are great when writing to geeks and teenagers. Wait a generation or two before using the expanding list of e-mail acronyms instead of legible, plain English words in correspondence, particularly to businesspeople who no longer use Stri-Dex medicated pads.
Attachment detachment. “Here’s all you need to know about our upcoming meeting,” says the e-missive to which five separate, disconnected documents are attached. Impossible to read, unfriendly to the recipient and challenging to digest, these documents clearly are the work of a lazy hand showing little respect for the reader. They’re often exacerbated by missing or inoperable attachments that don’t open, files in gibberish or other languages, or those for which the recipient doesn’t have proper software. Hyperlinked attachments (they start with “http:” and route recipients to a Web site where the actual documents reside) are useless when viewed on an airplane or otherwise offline. The link tells you nothing other than “Gotta stop and log on to figure out what this is all about.”
The budding hangover. “Be careful what you wish for,” says the old saw, “or you may well get it.” Consumers, strange ducks they, often do what marketers ask. So be prepared for an onslaught of consumer comment and inquiry when inviting it in an e-mail, on a Web site or on package copy.
Not too long ago, The Wall Street Journal chortled as it reported on just how bad this “be prepared” can be at leading companies. This writer’s favorite example: A WSJ reporter asked “Dear Bud Man” a simple question, as encouraged by the site: “Why is Budweiser beechwood aged?” After waiting four weeks for the appropriate committee meetings and planning sessions, legal reviews and such, the reporter was advised, to paraphrase, “Sorry. That’s confidential, top-secret manufacturing information. We can’t tell you, but thanks for asking.”
Think about how you and your organization will respond before promising to do so.
Bulk mailitis. This disease commonly afflicts marketers, particularly of the digital persuasion. Why not, they ask, send many thousands of personalized e-mails to our customers?
Among the worst afflictions is pseudopersonalia. An example, borrowed from a contest offer: “Won’t your neighbors be impressed when they see you stepping out of P.O. Box 384 in your brand-new mink coat?” Anyone you’d want to do business with can recognize cosmetic, automated customization.
My own thank-you letter from Charles Schwab (himself!) posted a 20-plus-digit “message number” in the “subject” file of my very own personal note from Chuck. If you’re planning to take the time to personalize, do just that. You’re probably personalizing messages to your most valuable customers. They deserve the best you can muster, not merely the fastest or most cost-effective.
Linguistic typosis. Generations of CEOs have succeeded with nary a finger touching a typewriter or computer keyboard. They shouted commands, had illiterate spewings transformed into perfect English by educated assistants, and never belied their illiteracy or lack of typing skill. Today, if you can’t type…or write reasonably coherent English…you spend the whole day catching up, proofreading and using spell-check and worse – while working around the increasingly e-mail-oriented organization you’ve built.
One of our senior folks is often slowed by 50% because of typing and grammar weaknesses. And it’ll be another several years at best until speech-recognition tools offer speech recognition, English grammar and business logic all on one CD-ROM. (Hint: “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing” is a great stealth typing trainer; it costs around $30. “The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual” runs about half that much.)
Human deficit disorder. Why talk to the person in the next cubicle? After all, if you have a conversation, (a) there’s no record of your brilliance; (b) how will you impress your boss and co-workers; and (c) how will you cover your backside, in case something you said was misinterpreted or misfired?
So we’ve stopped talking to one another, pecking missives for the record instead. The measure of success becomes e-mail generation, not work, product or project progress.
Scary stuff. In fact, so frightening I think I’ll send the staff an e-mail on the subject.
Nymformania. Nothing racy. Just the explosive use of online forms and questionnaires; but on most of them the buttons, lines and Xs seldom seem to work.
Fred over in accounting just created the form and blasted it out to the entire North American organization. He liked the way it looked. So what if it now takes 15 minutes to get all the Xs and text matter in the right spots, vs. less than 90 seconds for that old paper form?
Piles. Runs rampant when the sender cc’s half of the Western world, or at least the entire office floor. Each person, in turn, feels obliged to add his or her 2 cents, or even a simple “thanks for taking care of this.” And, you guessed it, they benignly hit “Reply to all” and generate near-infinite quantities of the banal, unnecessarily.
Proactivitis paralysis. I’ve saved the worst, most dreaded malady for last. It often brings all other business productivity to a halt, and can crash hard assets the way a clever virus crashes a hard drive.
The most diligent e-mail responders can seldom be diligent about much else: jobs, priorities, business relationships and (gasp!) the flood of 200 or more daily e-missives received by many middle managers at larger enterprises. If a typical Type A workday spans 600 minutes, excluding lunch, at three minutes an “e,” the day is done!
Some e-mails can be dismissed in seconds – or they can be forwarded, often spreading the disease. Most need at least a few seconds of thought. Many folks presume, since they have your e-mail address, they can ask you any inane question they want, without regard for the time required to answer. After all, since they e-mailed you, you’ll answer!
Similarly, for many, e-mail takes on an unwarranted omnipotence, stimulating a compulsion to answer. Hogwash. Trust me, it will be several generations before performance reviews begin evaluating the quality and quantity of e-mail response (outside the call center, anyway) by management.
Steps Toward a Cure
Fix the FBCPU (the flesh-based central processing unit). This is a human problem, not a systems failing. Regularly remind everyone in the organization that less is more where e-mail is concerned. (How? You guessed it. Use e-mail, of course. But try posters, coffee cups or cute e-correspondence. Will it bankrupt your company? Probably not. It might even make you some new friends.)
Stress customer relationships. Despite their impenetrable voicemail systems and Palm Pilots packed with priorities, customers are still human beings. As a rule, most human beings actually enjoy, and often crave, human contact. Remind your sales managers, customer relations and service folks, and the general managers as well that even an attempted phone call counts as a “reach out and touch” effort. It’s far more personal, friendly and productive than bits and bytes, even though it might take an extra minute or two per contact.
Promote and reward brevity. Here’s a place where “need we say more” says it all.
Lead from the top, face to face. Walk around. Talk to people. Show people how to use e-mail by using it appropriately yourself.
Have meetings! Shoot me now! Surely I’ll be banished from the management consultant’s union for suggesting that business can sometimes actually be enhanced by putting the smart people you work with around a conference table.
Who’da ever thunk that maybe more meetings would ever be proposed as an innovative business solution!
