I don't think there's likely to be much argument if I aver that email is the number one method of communication between remote workers, at least in a business context. And for most people, email is synonymous with Microsoft's Outlook software. So I'd like to use this post to make a few points on the subject, and being me, I'm going to try to be a tad contentious.

OK, so I'll give email one concession: it can be really useful because the world and his dog have it. If you have to communicate with people in other organisations, an email address is all you need, and the software does the rest. Its coverage is thus unrivalled, and it's well used, partly because of its ubiquity, partly because it's so easy to use, and partly because alternatives are a bit thin on the ground.

That's all well and good as far as it goes. But there are many insidious problems with email which can inhibit rather than promote collaboration. Here's my shortlist:

1. Many people may not realise that there are alternatives to Outlook. In fact, there are any number of email readers available, many of them free. They don't all have integrated calendars, but some offer facilities which Outlook doesn't. If you find Outlook frustrating to use, or lacking in some way, take a look at what's on offer outside the Microsoft world, and you may find something that suits you better.
2. Discussions start small, but grow in length. Who hasn't received email with the last few dozen comments trailing off the page, each neatly indented one chevron more than the last? And most of the time, the comments are in reverse order, making it harder than it should be to follow the whole conversation from end to end.
3. Discussions also broaden in context as they age, spawning sub-discussions and often splitting off at a tangent into new subject areas entirely. Outlook cannot cope with this unless the subject line is rigorously changed to match the content (and this is frequently forgotten about). Much better for this kind of thing are discussion boards which offer a multi-threading capability - you get to see who has changed the subject, and which messages are sent in response to which other messages.
4. Careful use of the "to", "cc" and especially "bcc" email fields allow political control over who sees what. It's easy to exclude people - for whatever reason - and you never know who has been copied in on the quiet. As a consequence, you can find yourself in trouble you hadn't bargained for if some lurker decides you've spoken out of turn. Some people also have the irritating habit of starting to copy in their boss when they realise they are losing the argument.
5. Many companies have email retention policies for legal reasons (which are actually email non-retention policies), so you can find that the email discussion of three months' vintage that you wanted to reference has evaporated without so much as a by-your-leave.

This is not to say that we shouldn't use emails; there are plenty of cases in which email works well, for example 1:1 conversations and the broadcasting of a message to a large group. But if you are expecting the next email you send to burgeon into a wide-ranging multi-person conversation - then maybe you should be thinking about an alternative rather than hitting the "send" button.

So, have any of you tackled this problem? And what happened when you did?



Photo Credit: Somewhat Frank