Jun 0806
No E-Mail Fridays
I got a wondrous e-mail today, from a Senior VP at the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). NFIB is a Matrix Group client and I sent him a routine e-mail. Here is what I got back:
“Please call me today. In an effort to facilitate better communication, I am not going to be communicating by email on Fridays. I look forward to meeting / speaking with you directly. Otherwise, I will respond to your email request on Monday. I encourage you to consider participating. Have a great day.”
Wow, no e-mail on Fridays. I’m not sure I can even imagine a day without e-mail. Would I have the guts to try such a thing? What would my clients and staff say? Would not responding to e-mail be liberating or would I just pay for my indulgence on Monday, when I come back to double the e-mail I have to respond to.
Has your organization implemented a similar policy? How have your members or clients responded? What do you think of the concept?
June 27th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I am the one who is doing this. It has proven to be very impactful. It is not that I dont read emails. I just choose to respond differently. Rather than the usual typed responsewhich is quick and does not allow for verbal or visual communication, it causes me to pick up the phone or walk down the hall to respond. People are starting to do the same in anticipation of how I will respond. Email is a great tool for quickly sharing information but not for communication and I am just trying to ween myself and others from using it as such. It is not an organizationwide policy, just mine. Monday’s work load is not impacted.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:00 am
David - it’s great that you are taking the intitive to point out your concerns and try to change the communications culture. Email is fantastic tool for many types of communication, but not all things. When people overuse it, it can create problems. For example, sometimes email threads start displacing informal networks, creating an often unrecognized loss of efficiency. Email overuse or misuse can also put a strain on work/life balance. I recently published a book on this subject called “Email Less —> Talk More: Improving Productivity & Job Satisfaction for You & Others”.
You can find it at: