A snippet of an article I found that made me go "WTF?" The last part is the kicker....
Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos, Europe's Largest IT Company, wants a 'zero email' policy to be in place in 18 months, arguing that only 10 per cent of the 200 electronic messages his employees receive per day on average turn out to be useful, and that staff spend between 5-20 hours handling emails every week. 'The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool,' says Breton. 'The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently.' Instead Breton wants staff at Atos to use chat-type collaborative services inspired by social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter as surveys show that the younger generation have already all but scrapped email, with only 11 per cent of 11 to 19 year-olds using it.
For his part Breton hasn't sent a work email in three years. "If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message. Emails cannot replace the spoken word."
Wait..."email can't replace the spoken word", but a text message can??
Email is trackable, can be as large or as small as needed, and can include attachments, video, documents, etc...but a 140-character text message is somehow superior??
What is this guy smoking?
"surveys show that the younger generation have already all but scrapped email, with only 11 per cent of 11 to 19 year-olds using it."
Hey, there's a good idea! Let's run our business like a bunch of 11 year-olds. Sorry, but the only people who have no use for email are people who have no job and nothing worthwhile to say or do.
I think the problem is the culture. The fact that there is a poor signal to noise ratio in employee communications is unlikely to be fixed by simply swapping medium from email to chat... The garbage will just come through the new channel. The situation will only improve if people begin thinking about what is necessary to communicate, rather than spamming every thought that comes into their mind.
