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IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

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In a 1999 Gartner Dataquest survey of IT managers in large enterprises, IT managers consistently ranked e-mail as one of the most mission-critical systems in their organizations, yet this resource’s importance is often undervalued. What steps are you taking to maximize the potential of e-mail? How does your organization leverage the knowledge and insight that is shared through e-mail? You can read the related Gartner article, which will be posted on 3:00 A.M. Wednesday, at http://www.techrepublic.com/article.jhtml?id=r00620000621kia05.htm.

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IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

We’ve got no handle on this at all. Our most concientious managers take hours at a time to try to keep up with their email to the detriment in other areas of production. Mail quickly surmounts any schemes to prioritize or screen. Furthermore, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Channels and content are overwhelming now and growing.

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

Maxmize it’s potential? That would require foresight and introspection and I just don’t see much of that.

At all levels, all I see are efforts to keep the mail moving and stored at increasingly heavy volumes. No real efforts are being made to separate out the few kilobytes of intelligence from amongst the hundreds of gigabytes of irrelevant minutia.

I think for the present we’re going to have to consider e-mail a noxious pollutant and start with some source reduction. Then maybe we can put data mining techniques to work at capturing that portion of a company’s intelligence that is embedded in electronic messages.

regards!

paul

(by e-mail, of course…)

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

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IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

E-mail is a problem because it is used for too many things which have better alternatives.

Internal company web pages, bulletin boards, and threaded discussion lists (as well as good, old face to face communication!) are better for broadcastinginfo to a wide number of people. E-mail is good for time shifting individual correspondence of moderate priority.

Moving bulk communications off of e-mail to other mechanisms is a major step in reducing the e-mail burden. The remaining uses aremostly conveniences tath could be replaced by paper alternatives (faxes, letters, memos, etc.) in a pinch.

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

Currently we are looking at ways of archieving important emails that pertain to
ERP related issues. This will spread to other areas, particularly our R&D area. We
hold email within our top 3 critical systems here and use it as a standard part of
our daily workflow. I feel that ideas and communication are more meaningful and definite in email then by mouth because you have an audit trail which allows progress and results to be measured against.

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

We are just beginning to structure our organization as a “learning organization”, where we identify leaders in different technical areas and identify our “best of breed” technical solutions. Though we haven’t yet identified e-mail as playing a role in organizational learning, it will clearly be a critical tool because most of the information about decisions that were made, and the reasons behind them, are contained in e-mails. E-mails will be most useful for this purpose if they are written using the assumption that any individual in the organization should be able to understand them. That means that we should take the time to provide context and references (and perhaps even keywords to enable searching), and not assume while writing an e-mail that the reader is aware of all other related e-mails and documents.

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

The Gartner article did its usual excellent job analyzing the “facts” surrounding e-mail. However, this may be much like debating the question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

First, e-mail is a technology in rapid transition and represents but a very brief instant in the evolution of information technology, the Internet and e-business. Indeed, using Geoffery Moore’s (from the book Inside the Tornado) Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC) as an analytical and predictive framework, it can be argued that e-mail, as we know it, is soon to be replaced by new technology. For example, we are on the threshold of a voice recognition revolution that will lead to a totally new set of IT capabilities and problems, many of whichwill displace, improve on or make moot the deficiencies and problems mentioned in the Gartner article.

The IT and Internet evolution has taken on a life of its own which is beyond our ability to manage and control it. History would suggest that communication technol

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

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IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

(The balance of the Dr. John T. Whiting answer above)

History would suggest that communication technology, such as e-mail, will be truly managed and controlled by the expanded capabilities, management systems and controls that will define the next generation of evolving replacement technology.

Clearly, e-mail, as faulty as it may be in its existing form, has evolved into a dominant mode of communication for both business and society. Like the emergence of the telephone, we need to learn to use it wisely. It is equally clear that the deficiencies in existing e-mail will be the focus of those who are the visionaries and creators of new technology, and that many of the issues noted with concern in the Gartner article will be resolved as a function of Darwinian self selection. By the time we find an answer to the question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”, the e-mail angel will have evolved into a new form with new questions associated to it. The goal should beto use it with discr

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

(completion of the Dr. Whiting answer)

The goal should be to use it with discretion now, but not be overly analytical about it as to distract us from the fact that it is only a short lived technology soon to be replaced by the next generation of technology, and that it will not be around long enough to justify much of the concern being debated about it.

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

Like so many things that promise a “Pot of Gold”, the actual undertaking to get it can be fraught with peril.
While e-mail has the potential to accelerate a companies knowledge transfer and exchange, it comes with the cost in time and energy taken away from other tasks.
E-mail, for me, is Mission Critical. I could not function with my team across National and International bounderies and time-zones without it. But a balance needs to be struck with answering e-mail and getting the job done.
This exchange is a good example of that balance that is needed. While I advocate these forums, and enjoy and benfit from the insight gathered, my Inbox awaits…

IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

In reply to IT Debate: Your e-mail is a pot of gold

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