I don't usually simple post links to interesting texts here; I like to try to make this personal. But maybe I am just an arrogant writer who pretends not to like to take other people’s ideas.
In any case, I have been advocating for some time now that e-mail is clearly not always the best form of communication. It might take days to solve a question with e-mails which could be solved with a 3 minutes phone call. And often people don't realize it.
One of the things that I instituted at Hohner was to try to answer letters and e-mails we go from consumers by phone, if the info was available. It takes less time, the customer gets impressed (wow, a product manager actually called because of my e-mail!) and I could tick the task off knowing that I wouldn't get a reply with more questions.
So meet the e-mail free Fridays. Some companies are telling their employees not to use e-mail on Fridays. Other are stressing the importance of an e-mail free weekend (which has always been my policy towards work e-mail).
An excerpt and a link:
Managers complain that rather than confronting problems, employees use email to avoid them by passing issues back and forth in long message strings, like a hot potato. Email reduces face-to-face contact among co-workers and clients; terse, poorly phrased messages further strain those relationships. And it is spilling into weekends, chaining employees to computers when they should be relaxing.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119205641656255234.html?mod=blog
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