Technology is great! As long as we're the ones on the receiving end and not vice versa. Very few organizations are immune to excessive overuse of e-mail.

 

Of course the usefulness of this tool is not up for debate, but raise your hand if you've never grumbled when confronted with 100-150 emails that need to be gotten through, possibly before the end of the day!

 

What makes us think that it won't get worse in the coming years?

 

And it's not just a problem of quantity, but of quality as well.

 

Who hasn't all too often been copied on an email for no reason? Keep adding to the list yourselves because it's a long one. And the ''battle'' of the emails must often be fought after many long hours of meetings.

 

Are these always useful? Is a decision always reached? Once again, I leave the list to you. We can no longer stand idly by doing nothing, or pretending that everything is okay.

 

When the time comes for a spending review try to calculate the cost/hour for managers that must attend excessively long (and often not terribly useful) meetings, or that must spend time going through enormous amounts of e-mails.