Just Say No to Email

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” – The Captain in Cool Hand Luke

Actually, no. What we have is way too much communication and not enough collaboration. Just look at your email inbox. SPAM filters are somewhat effective at blocking unsolicited commercial emails and bulk mailings but not the junk mail from your friends and coworkers. This flood of communication attacks our ability to focus attention on what is important.

Additionally, email suffers from four significant failings, any one of which could render it an unsuitable choice for business collaboration:

Email Is Not Secure

Intercepting email is expensive. However, if your organization or the one you are working with is a leading competitor in its industry then someone may be willing to pay the price. Actually, this is the one time that SPAM may be your friend. Anyone interested in your email not only has to have sophisticated technology to intercept your email and high-price operators to use it but also has to sort through the SPAM to find anything of value. In practice strategic military facilities send each other SPAM all the time to help hide their classified transmissions.

Email can be encrypted but rarely is. Most users do not know that it can be encrypted and, even if they do, few of them know how to do it. It is possible to encrypt emails transiting between organizations that have dissimilar email systems; however, users have to request this service and administrators of the sending and receiving organizations have to configure their servers to use a common encryption paradigm. Larger organizations using more sophisticated messaging systems have extremely strong, dual-key encryption for their email but, again, users rarely employ it. Most are blithely unaware that their messages are at risk.

You might suppose that internal messages are safer than external ones. However, the vast majority of security breaches are internal. Few users are aware that email administrators can read their messages. Thus, I could easily pay one of them to intercept your email for me bypassing the need for sophisticated interception technologies. The only protection you have against someone accessing your mail file directly is encryption. Alternatively, you can create the content of your messages as encrypted text files and email them as attachments.

Email Is Not Manageable

Managers are not aware of email exchanges between subordinates unless they are copied and, if they are copied, they often are inundated with so much email that they hardly have time to review any of it adequately. Thus, employees may be wasting time on activities that are not authorized or desirable.

Worse yet, employees may be exchanging messages with outside vendors that materially alter or affect contractual relationships. Managers may not become aware of these until it is too late to correct them. Granted, employees can be trained and warned against inappropriate communications and contracts can be written to avoid any unauthorized changes but sorting out disputes, even successful ones is a costly business that only the lawyers win.

It is impossible to moderate a an email discussion thread unless the moderator is copied on all emails that comprise it. Also, when new members join the team or business unit mid-way into an important discussion, they do not have access to earlier messages unless someone forwards these to them.

Email Is Costly

Basic email service is cheap enough. Even factoring in the licensing costs of servers and individual workstation clients, monthly email service may be as little as $25 per user. However, when you begin adding special services to block SPAM and insure security, the cost quickly rises. Furthermore, multiple addressees on emails require greater enterprise bandwidth to transmit the messages and, if they contain even modestly sized attachments, greatly increased storage capacity to store everybody's copy.

Again, more robust systems have provisions to store only one copy of the attachment that all addressees may access. Still, I have rarely found email administrators who have had the foresight to enable this feature.

Email Is Not collaborative

Email is a means of communication. Are collaboration and communication not the same? Emphatically not. Communication is a flow of information; collaboration is joint activity with sharing of resources. Communication is a one-way transmission of information; collaboration could theoretically be completely silent while two or more people work together toward a common end.

Asynchronous Collaboration

Groupware is an example of asynchronous collaboration wherein members of a team take turns contributing to the group effort. They are among the first applications to take advantage computer networks in general and the Internet in particular. Interestingly, the current Wikipedia article on collaborative software includes email, calendaring, text chat, and wiki in this category which serves to illustrate that this is not a truly reliable source of information. Text chats and wikis did not exist when groupware came into being. In fact the best examples of early groupware applications included email as an accessory but this served only to alert users that content was available to be shared or their attention was need to take action on it. Shared calendars, on the other hand, are the only one of the four features mentioned in the Wikipedia article that was included in early groupware and helped people collaborate. It allowed them to schedule their time as a group and, thus, coordinate their collaborative efforts.

Some groupware applications have extremely robust security apparatus. Dual-key identities for user authentication and authorization as well as file and data exchange encryption is extremely difficult to circumvent and make groupware the obvious choice for collaborating with highly sensitive documents and data.

More than 20 years after their introduction groupware applications remain a powerful tool for collaboration. They include provisions for workflow applications wherein documents progress through a well-defined and well-managed process. The documents are stored in a central file to which users connect in sequence to perform their assigned operations.

A less sophisticated form of asynchronous collaboration began when users simply stored files in a common network location and others accessed them as necessary. Simple directory permissions were used to control who had access to these files. Document sharing programs evolved to provide a formal structure to this process. Like groupware, the documents are stored in a centrally located database file. Typically, they provide document check out and check in locks to insure that two people do not attempt the edit the same document simultaneously. Some have accessory applications like group calendars and may be confused with groupware. However, they do not have the more advanced groupware features such as workflow and their document security apparatus is likely to be less robust.

Synchronous Collaboration

Instant messaging (IM) or text chatting is the most obvious example of synchronous collaboration wherein two or more users are working together in real time. Some might argue that IM is, like email, little more than a means of communication. However, email is not synchronous and it is that quality that moves IM into the realm of collaboration. If you choose to use email for business collaboration, do not use a publicly available medium. These are easily intercepted. Choose one that can be encrypted and allows for recording of chat sessions so that collaborative exchanges can be preserved.

On line meetings are also synchronous and a major tool for collaboration. Again, do not use ones that are publicly available to share sensitive materials. Choose one that can be encrypted and allows for synchronous editing of shared documents.

Conclusion

Breaking the email habit is not easy but there is no excuse not to try. The shortcomings of email are severe and there are alternatives that have far greater capability.
Do not confuse communication with collaboration. The next time you click “New Memo” stop and think: “Do I want to work with them or pontificate at them?” Your choice will be clearer then.

About the Author

Jack Durish is the Interim IT Executive. He has helped organizations of all sizes including global ones discover and adopt creative technological solutions to real business problems. He has participated in every aspect of exploring emerging technologies, evaluating them, and deploying them. He has also aided in their adoption, training and motivating users to maximize the return on technological investments.

Jack has more than 30 years experience planning projects, scheduling tasks, and managing teams in government and military operations as well as private industry. He is a creative problem solver with a proven track record of surmounting risks to complete projects on time and on budget.

Jack is a skilled communicator. He is a published author of books both fiction and nonfiction as well as IT courseware and articles. He is an experienced lecturer in the boardroom as well as the classroom having mastered the ability to both instruct and persuade audiences of all sizes and types.
Visit his website at http://www.ironlantern.com