Comments on: Getting off the email hamster wheel.

By: Rex Lee

Rex Lee — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:49:29 +0000

Gil, Good post. As easy as it is to slam e-Mail, I can remember the time before e-mail… And it was NOT better… As for powerpoint, I think the same thing applies. It’s easy to slam powerpoint, but the same bad habits people employ to build decks (e.g. Death by bullets) are often transferable to other social authoring tools such as wikis.

By: Gil Yehuda

Gil Yehuda — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:21:28 +0000

Hadley, Thanks!
Exactly my point. Slamming email is easy and fun, but does not make us more productive. Some really good (proven) disciplines have a much better impact on our work. And I totally agree, E2.0 vendors that ignore email are running the risk of being irrelevant to their enterprise customers. Most of the popular vendors have some email integration, some more than others (e.g. allowing collaboration between people on the platform and others who insist on email-only).

The most recent Hamster Revolution book (for meetings) addresses meeting length too — suggesting hard-starts, 20 or 50 minute lengths (to accommodate the need for bio-breaks and to allow for hard-starts at your next meeting if they are “back-to-back”), and also suggests “mini-meetings”. Moreover the authors suggest a methodology to determine if you need to attend a meeting of not. There’s a lot of great ideas in this small book, that’s why I’m recommending it.

As for PowerPoint — we’ll that’s a post for another day. I’m slightly influenced by Edward Tufte’s loathing of the tool, but I think there is a way to use it right also. My recommendation here is the book “Beyond Bullet Points” — which is less extreme than “Presentation Zen”, and yet quite effective at helping you use PowerPoint in a very different manner.

To the readers: let me disclose to you that Hadley (and two other colleagues) taught me most of what I know about Enterprise 2.0 prior to my employment at Forrester (where I learned a bunch more).

By: Hadley Stern

Hadley Stern — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:05:46 +0000

Great post, Gil and one that we all struggle with daily. The combination of email and meeting can make one feel productive but really is it just keeping busy?

Of course it is easy to slam email, something that in the last 15 years has totally reshaped the working (and personal) world. But I don’t think that just because some people have difficulty managing it means that it is bad. I’ve actually found the Covey approach helpful, and just reminding myself, as tempting as it is, not to just immediately go through email the first thing in the morning.

As for folders and organizing I find that almost as wasteful as over-checking email. My latest strategy is when I read an email that I need to follow-up on I simply deal with it then, or flag it for later. Otherwise I don’t bother moving email to folders and simply archive as the folder gets to big. I then rely on search to find anything I need in archives.

I think the enterprise 2.0 products and services that ignore email (and I realize the irony in me stating this regarding previous conversations about email and integration with forums) do so at their peril.

Finally, regarding meetings, my new strategy is to propose shorter times (30 minutes instead of 60 minutes) but the trick is to do it without offending the person of invited me. And, for meetings that I do myself I’m experimenting with 15 minute meeting.

And one more finally, I would contend that the biggest achilles heel of enterprise 2.0 is powerpoint. Powerpoint, for better or worse, is the primary communication tool within corporations. This is why, until this changes, I think that SharePoint will win.