E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Can Social Tools Really Replace Email? – They Already Are! (Part II)

As I have mentioned in a previous blog post this is Part II from the series of blog posts put together as a follow up from the various reactions from the Lifehacker blog post Can Social Tools Really Replace Email? This time around focusing on four different comments from various folks that I would try to explain further how they affect to my new reality of giving up on e-mail, that is, corporate e-mail. Thus without much further ado, let’s get things started; I will be grabbing excerpts from each of the conversations and adding further up into each of them. Here we go:

"[...] However, after thinking it through – he’s really just replacing one tool, with several others – and imposing unwanted disciplines on his clients."

No, I am not replacing one tool with a bunch of others. What I am actually doing for the last five months is re-purposing all of the interactions that were coming through to my e-mail inbox and shifted most of them outside of my own inbox, specially when the nature of those conversations is a public and open one so that other knowledge workers have got the opportunity to help contribute just as much as I would. Then those one-on-one e-mails where confidential or sensitive information gets discussed are still going through my mail box in the usual way. That’s the only instance that gets processed through regular e-mail.

"… imposing unwanted disciplines on his clients?" is an interesting comment. One which some folks may be agreeing with, but to which I am going to reply "Who is imposing what to whom?" Am I getting imposed as well having to go through my inbox to process those e-mails? I mean, just because you like and are using e-mail to reach out to me does not necessarily mean that I have to like or use e-mail as well as a method of engagement. In most cases, it is all about finding a common denominator where we would all be able to collaborate.

For a good number of years most knowledge workers didn’t have the option, nor the choice, for good collaborative tools, but nowadays with the emergence of social software within the corporate world the choice is there. And we might as well make use of it, so just because folks may be sending an e-mail does not necessarily mean I would want to engage through e-mail as well. The choice is there. The choice is from both parties to negotiate & jointly decide what’s the best way of collaborating and sharing our knowledge not just amongst ourselves, but also with the rest of the corporation. And perhaps e-mail is not the best option here.

I know this may sound more complex than what it actually is, because in most cases that negotiation and choice is something that happens inherently when both parties get together through real-time collaboration, like IM, or whatever other social computing tool, and co-jointly decide what’s the best way to share the information. I have yet to see the first person from the hundreds of interactions I have carried out over the last few months who only uses e-mail to process every single conversation they get involved with. It just doesn’t happen anymore. The reality of the 21st business is completely different to what may have been in the early 90s, for instance.

"[...] this whole inbox zero is an illusion of productivity. just because you have no emails doesn’t mean you’re more on top of your life."

An illusion of productivity? On the contrary! Over the last five months it has been an incredibly boost of my own productivity, that of my team(s), the communities I belong to, and the company as a whole. Why? Because I no longer have the stress of constantly having to check e-mail; the flow of the conversations is out in the open available to everyone else to contribute as well; it is no longer me the only one who can action something, my social networks can help chime in and contribute with their two cents; most of the knowledge that I can contribute with is now available to my immediate teams and communities, and, as such, the entire company, not locked down in one of my mail archives waiting to be deleted and never to be checked out again!

Yes, I may be getting much more heavily involved with the various social networking spaces that I get to hang out in, but that is a decision I have made for myself and rather consciously. Why? Because I am part of each of those different social networks. And I would want to contribute into nurturing those relationships, getting to know the various connections, helping out where I may possibly can, feeling part of the network who is already passionate about a specific topic, i.e. the same one(s) I am passionate about myself.

But here is the thing. All of those interactions I may be doing now are eventually going to pay off really really big time in its due time, when I am not there. When I am away, on holidays, on conference events, off sick, whatever. More than anything else because people from those social networks will help contribute and help me get those answers, without me even being there! Just like I have been doing myself for them when they were not there! That is the ultimate power of the social network! Yes, indeed, what some folks would call crowdsourcing! But one where you would be contributing in exactly the same terms as everyone else and still feel part of it big time!

And believe me, it is not an illusion to come back from an extended vacation and find out that your inbox is ZERO. No e-mails to process. No need to be attached, while on vacation, to your mobile device to cut down on the final number of e-mails you need to process, so that when you arrive home it’s easier to catch up with the sheer volume! Just get back to work from day one, and already knowing the job has been done and it’s time for you to catch up with whatever the community has been involved with. I am not sure what you folks would think, but that, to me, is no illusion of productivity, but my own reality for the last five months and counting! And it can be yours, too!

"What struck me about this article was that the author was imposing his needs and his priorities over other people’s. I like email because I can answer it on my own schedule. If I’m really "in the zone" and working on a project, I don’t check my email until I’m done. [...] The author of this article is choosing not to use email, but instead, he’s imposing his interruptions on all of his coworkers, whether they want them or not."

The first sentence from this particular comment was rather interesting and thought provoking. I am sure you would agree with that. Imposing my needs and priorities over other people’s when I am the one who is getting contacted to have his knowledge shared for whatever the specific task? Imposing my needs when I am going to provide the answer much faster, much better, and reaching out to the entire corporate bringing it out in the open? How is that going to have me impose whatever on the other peers? Wouldn’t it be quite the opposite? Let’s see that with an example.

Let’s say that I am working on a particular task from my various project activities and all of a sudden I get an e-mail from someone wanting to have an answer on a specific question. The interruption is there already, to get things started. Yes, I may not check it out right away and only when it is at my own convenience, but it is still an interruption, so it eventually is going to take me a little while to reply back because it will get added to my list of tasks to do and, of course, it’s going to have its own priority. In most cases several days after and perhaps when the individual does no longer need it anymore because they found their way through other means.

Here is the example of what I normally do. I am working on a specific task and someone would contact me through e-mail asking for some information. It’s an interruption, indeed, but since it is an interruption whether I can judge whether I can help or not within the first 15 seconds I fire up IM & get back to that person sharing with them the answer right there, right then. What is the first reaction from people you would think? Which of the two scenarios you would go for as the person sending the request? Wouldn’t you want to have the answer as soon as you possibly can so that you can move on? I know I would!

Here is the thing, I have been doing that for the last five months and most of the reactions I have received back have been along the lines of "Oh, thanks a lot for the prompt response! Appreciated", which means that they themselves never expected to have an answer so soon! Points won here, indeed! And it gets better, because the second reaction you are provoking with such interactions is that the next time that same person needs something they would remember how fast you have been using IM vs. e-mail and therefore will only send you IMs from there onwards! One less person sending you e-mails! Next …

In a world where interactions through collaboration and knowledge sharing are taking place faster than ever, it is time for us to adapt ourselves to the new demands and interact accordingly. Of course, not every single e-mail should be processed like this, but then again not every e-mail deserves to wait there for ages before getting a reply. Thus if you can help contribute fix a problem as soon as you possibly can why not go ahead and do it and then move on to the next thing? That’s what I have been doing all along during this time and it has worked wonders! In multiple various different ways, too!

And, finally, I would like to conclude quoting the comment from one of the folks commenting on the Lifehacker blog which I think would be a very nice wrap up of the conversations that have taken place in that particular article and which I feel describe very nicely why I have given up on work related e-mail and moved a large chunk of those conversations into the social computing world. And, not to worry, even if I weren’t a social computing evangelist at IBM I would still be feeling exactly the same way and would be working in the same way. Do you want to try me out? Want to hire me to see if I would be able to do it or not? Here is why:

"We just started using Confluence wiki at our company as a corporate collaboration / knowledge base tool, and so far it has been very cool. Adoption is slowly gaining ground, you just have to convince people that it is better to create content in the wiki for all to see and edit rather than using Word and emailing it ’round and ’round for updates.

Wikis certainly won’t replace email, but for many tasks it provides a better solution. With email, the content of the messages is eventually lost or hard to find (and only by those in the email chain). With a wiki, the information is captured for all to see and revise, and becomes a living document. Good stuff in the corporate world."

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(That comment, coincidentally was shared by Michael Kizer, who then points to this particular blog E2.0H, where you can read some really good stuff on Enterprise 2.0 and Enterprise social software adoption and between that comment and a few of the entries I have been reading there here I am subscribed to another good blog doing some really cool things on the Enterprise 2.0 space. Now would I have been able to find about that using e-mail? Probably, but I bet you that it would have taken me quite a substantial amount of time to reach the same goal. Yet, here I am, enjoying some really good reading and ready for another wonderful and relaxing weekend (Without e-mail!) where I am finally going to meet up one of the folks who I have been following for several years: Stephen Downes. He is here in Gran Canaria on holidays and we are going to have dinner tonight and catch up with one another. It’s about time!

Now would e-mail have been able to enable that? … I doubt it!

Have a good one everyone!)

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Transparency, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, New York Times, NYTimes, Ownership, Negotiation, Joint Decisions, Crowdsourcing, Interruptions, Managing Interruptions, Productivity Tools, Office Tools, Tools, Real-time Collaboration, Online Collaboration, Immediacy, Michael Kizer, E2.0H, Stephen Downes, Gran Canaria, Connections

Can Social Tools Really Replace Email? – They Already Are! (Part I)

Continuing further with the nice momentum of the large number of reactions that the recent article I published in the NYTimes, I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip, has been creating over the last few days I thought I would touch base today on one of the blog posts, and its extended commentary, that I have enjoyed the most from the perspective of touching basis on a series of items I have been dealing with over the last few months as well. Yes, I am talking about the really nice blog post put together by Kevin Purdy at Lifehacker titled "[Ask the readers] Can Social Tools Really Replace Email?".

The article itself questions whether social tools are ready to replace e-mail or not and comes to some very interesting conclusions that I thought I would touch base on. Those final thoughts are actually not coming up from Kevin alone, but by the Lifehacker readers and while going through them I just couldn’t help thinking how hard I have hit the nerve with this particular topic. I tell you, every day I am more convinced that this blog is going to shift gears into becoming "Thinking out of the Inbox".

Anyway, what I would like to do in this blog post is to comment on a couple of items Kevin mentions as well as some of the comments folks have been leaving behind debating whether they could give up on corporate e-mail or not. Rather fascinating read, indeed, as most of the issues they indicate are issues I faced myself way at the beginning, but five months onwards, none of them are still lingering around…

Thus ready? Here we go:

"Assuming you could convince your superiors to install the needed tools and let you give it a try, could you see yourself benefiting from internal social networking instead of endless email replies?"

This is quite an interesting and provocative question from Kevin. One that I was doubtful about providing an answer many many years ago, but not today. Convincing my superiors to install the needed tools? Hummm, not sure what you would think about this one folks, but I doubt most knowledge workers would care about this any longer. Unless the information & knowledge shared may well be of a confidential nature to the business, I doubt they would care to share the rest inside the corporate firewall. On the contrary, even if their superiors are not very much in favour of providing the tools, people are still going out there and use other social tools, anyway!

Although I will comment on that blog post at a later time as well, Steve Rubel has put it quite nicely in a recent blog post when talking about Independent’s Day: Digital Nomads Rising. Go and have a read and you will know what I mean. In short, with the massively rampant innovation going on at the moment out there in the consumer space, knowledge workers have got plenty more opportunities and choices to share what they know with others using social tools outside of the company’s firewall that not long ago didn’t even exist. Yet, today, they are all over the place, rather pervasive and waiting for everyone to chime in, which brings in another interesting question with regards to Intellectual Capital and Intellectual Property rights, but that would be the subject for another blog post at some point in time. Still I am not sure that knowledge workers would need to convince their superiors to have those social tools in place. They will not care much, they will just do it. It’s already happening and big time!

Moving on forward, I am just going to focus now on a few of the comments that were shared on that particular blog post and which I think are rather an indication of the kind of challenge we are all facing, if we would want to adopt Enterprise 2.0 social tools beyond just the pilot or trial out phases. There are plenty of them, so will try to keep my comments short …

- E-mail as single point of entry vs. social networking tools, scattered all over the place

Contrary to what most people seem to think, you, too, can have that single point of entry experience when making use of social networking tools. Yes, something that I have already talked about extensively and which I feel has been rather underutilised for the last few years: your RSS / Atom feed reader(s)! As simple as that! Oh, and don’t worry, it is not another in-box! It is actually an application that advises you there is new / updated content out there in your most favourite online social spaces where you usually hang out, waiting for it to be digested or contribute once again! Or not!! (You decide)

- Knowledge workers tend to check e-mail more regularly than blog comments, wiki updates, etc.

This particular comment that came up a couple of times is a clear indication of the kind of addiction we all seem to have with corporate e-mail. It’s the first thing we check when we wake up (Not even when we go to the office!); the first thing we check right after lunch; the last thing we check before we leave the office; it’s the first thing we check after we have had dinner, put the kids to bed, checked there isn’t anything interesting on T.V. and off we go again! To check our e-mail. Not sure what you folks would think about this or not, but that, to me, is an addiction. I broke with it five months ago and I can surely tell you it feels great! How about you? Are you ready to break that addiction yourself?

One other thing as well that I keep telling folks who keep asking about it. I think it is also about time that people understand that you don’t need to constantly be checking out resources, tools, whatever, to see what things have been added or updated. Only thing that will create is lot of stress that you may be missing key, crucial, important information. Don’t worry. You are not! And if you are, you will find out about it just when you need it. Always on time! (And in another blog post I will explain why and how this happens…)

- E-Mail transitioning more and more into real-time collaboration with other knowledge workers

This is something that I saw myself from the very first beginning that I started moving away from corporate e-mail. I already hinted it in yesterday’s blog post: Instant Messaging has become my number #1 tool to handle social interactions, whether business or personal related. Why? More than anything else because of the immediacy. Something that I learned as well while doing this experiment in the first few weeks and something that you may not realise about just yet.

Every time you read an e-mail coming through to you, I can guarantee you that, within the first 15 seconds after you finish reading it, you already know whether you can help out or not, or whether you know the answer to the query or where to find the information or not. Yes, just within those first 15 seconds! So why not helping that other fellow colleague right away starting a chat and right away engaging in the conversation. There is a great chance that by doing so, you are helping your colleagues much faster and much more efficiently (No lingering e-mails lagging behind day after day, just because you are too busy) and at the same time next time they may need your help you are already telling them how you are much more responsive and which tool(s) to use for that. One less e-mail coming your way next time!

- Social networking tools are just being used very much as personal / fun social tools still

To my surprise, while going through the different comments from the Lifehacker article, I noticed how most folks seem to think that social networking tools are still very much dealing with the personal / private side of knowledge workers. Yes, the fun part of the Web. And therefore cannot see the immediate business benefit from making use of them within the corporate world. Well, to me, it is all about how your re-purpose yourself in making use of those tools.

Here is an example. Inside IBM you all have heard how we have got one social networking site called Beehive, where people tend to share pictures, create lists (Hive5s), events, etc. etc. all channeled through people’s profiles. A good chunk of it all done for the fun of it. Well, to me, Beehive is my second most preferred social software tool inside IBM for a couple of reasons:

1. It allows me to interact with fellow colleagues offline by dropping quick messages into people’s profiles, thus no need to send an e-mail when they are not online and
2. It allows me tremendously to work harder on my social capital skills to get to know the folks I collaborate and exchange knowledge with much better. Why? Because I am not just interested in their technical, management or business skills alone. I am mostly interested in each of them as persons, as individuals, who also bring to work their personal life, because it is an integral part of them, and somehow I feel I have now got a choice to become part of that as well or not, whether I engage in those social tools or not.

(Social capital has been, perhaps, one of the areas from KM most undermined and undervalued for quite some time, when we all know it is one of the key fundamental success factors from any kind of collaboration and knowledge sharing! Why? Because of the trust that it enables and empowers amongst knowledge workers!)

Thus who said that social networking tools are only being use for fun & play? And even then, what’s wrong with that? Have we forgotten how we all got to learn the most important things in our lives when we were young (And play was a core skill of ours)? A lot younger? I seriously (Pun intended) hope not!

- E-Mail still preferred over social networking tools, because it’s hard to keep up their initial momentum

Collaboration, we all know, is all about people, about getting people together to collaboratively work on achieving a specific task. However, we all know that (social) tools also play an important role as enablers to help ease or enhance that collaboration. However, no one can expect that collaboration will happen overnight with these tools if people are not well prepared!

I am sure that plenty of folks out there would agree with me how one of the main issues corporations seem to be facing at the moment is how people, knowledge workers, just don’t know how to collaborate, how to share their knowledge with other peers, because they have never been taught. And since you have never been taught you tend to revert to the easy way out, i.e. the lowest common denominator: e-mail!

This is one of the things we would need to start taking more and more seriously and never take for granted that people may, or may not, know how to make use of collaborative, knowledge sharing or social networking tools. Putting together a wiki and expecting everyone to contribute is not going to be very helpful, nor very successful.

We need to nurture the co-creation of activities within a wiki, for instance, with the proper education, facilitation, training, coaching, shadowing, whatever, in order to help knowledge workers become more productive making use of these new social tools. Walking them hand in hand extensively, till they become self-sufficient is key! No wonder people give up on these tools almost right at the beginning. Of course, if you don’t show them the way and you walk it along with them, they will not change their habits, they will not consider moving on from those tools they are already comfortable with. This, to me, is key for the successful adoption of social software within the enterprise to help move away from corporate e-mail: education, facilitation, training & support on how to best make use of these social tools with the least effort possible. Yes, the lowest barrier of entry! That’s when we will see a massive reduction in the number of e-mails exchanged. For sure!

- Social Software will never replace e-mail

This was the final trend of thought from the various commenters on the Lifehacker’s blog post and I must say that I can certainly agree with it. If you have been reading this blog for a little while longer, you will know that I have never said that e-mail will die or that social software will eventually take over e-mail for good. What is actually going to happen is how social software and social networking tools are going to help us all re-purpose the way we use e-mail at the moment. It will still be used, but in my own case, only for one specific set of interactions: those one-on-one private conversations of a confidential or sensitive nature that I keep talking all along. The rest of the conversations are going to go out in the public, open spaces where collaboration happens in a transparent way, with half the effort, because everyone is contributing and doing their job (And not me doing everything!) & much faster results than just getting the job done through e-mail. But not to worry, this is something that I will be expanding further on as well as time goes by…

And that was it! Those were some of the various thoughts that came out from the Lifehacker readers who took their time to share their thoughts on why social tools may (Or may not) replace e-mail. There have been four other commenters though with some more specific items that I thought I would touch base on in another blog post as they present some rather unique views on why they would never give up on e-mail and why after reading them I feel they should! Thus stay tuned for Part II!

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Transparency, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, New York Times, NYTimes, Ownership, Feed Readers, RSS, Atom, Productivity Tools, Office Tools, Tools, Real-time Collaboration, Online Collaboration, Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker, Steve Rubel, Digital Nomads, Intellectual Capital, Intellectual Property, Addiction, Immediacy, Social Capital, Beehive, Social Networking Sites, SNS, Re-purposing e-mail