Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

I've written a bit about email and meetings.  Both are the source of quite a few complaints.  This thought-provoking post from the Harvard Business Review added a new layer of analysis that I handn't seen before. Here's a snippet from the post:

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Recognize it's not really about email 
According to Allen, email overload is only a symptom of a larger issue: a lack of clear and effective protocols. If your organization has ambiguous decision-making processes and people don't get what they need from their colleagues, they'll flood the system with email and meeting requests. People then get mired down in their backlog, which leads to even more email and meeting requests from frustrated co-workers trying to follow up.

Allen had one client who had an average backlog of 3,000 – 4,000 emails. When he finally cleared and stayed on top of his inbox, both his email traffic and his meeting load went down. His colleagues got the direction and input they needed so they didn't need to hound him. "Email handled well reduces meetings. And meetings handled well reduces emails," Allen says. Taking the time to reply now can save you twice the time in the future.

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The post have some other great tips on how to manage emails.  Happy reading, guys.