Why Zero Email Is No Goose Egg
It’s the end of internal emails for the 72,000 employees at France-based Atos. CEO Thierry Breton has been getting a lot of attention since declaring his “zero email” policy that aims to do away with internal emails. Here’s my take on what’s in it for Atos:
- Employees can communicate better because all internal communications occur in channels dedicated to employees—no more comingling internal with external
- Real-time mechanisms like instant messaging encourage shorter back-and-forths that resolve more quickly
- Content can be shared, managed and therefore better leveraged across the company
- A big chunk of their four to five billion email messages received annually that suck up time and resources will simply go away
- As applications like Salesforce.com Chatter get broader adoption, including support for customers and partners, resistance will be futile
Email had a good run—and it isn’t going away any time soon—but it’s best days are behind it. Who likes opening their inbox and finding hundreds of new messages to sort through every day? How many times do you blindly hit the delete button on emails you get from companies or people you don’t know?
You have to wonder if shifting email to other forms of digital conversation will really be more efficient. After all, texting and instant messaging have their downside too. What’s missing in all of this should be obvious: where do live conversations fit into the ebb and flow of inbound and outbound b2b communications? The dynamics of a live phone conversation are very different than a typewritten conversation—a simple fact too often lost in an era when the popular thinking is whatever’s digital must be better.
Breton told the WSJ “Emails cannot replace the spoken word. If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message.” The next time you start to fire off an email, try letting your voice do the talking instead of your fingers.
- Tom