Email: A Barrier to Effective Collaboration?
16 April 2009 Tweet Email remains the most popular tool, according to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Adobe, to understand how knowledge workers collaborate in European countries. Adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs and other collaboration platforms remains low. Due to familiarity with email and lack of awareness, trust and training in collaboration tools – perhaps even a lack of collaboration technology infrastructure – emails with attachments remain the primary means. Even when collaboration tools are available, a lack of discipline and enforcement thereof, emails are much utilized “side conversations” among collaborators.
Companies wanting to create and nurture a collaboration culture should monitor their email traffic. A discernable decrease in email traffic may be a good indicator of an increased use of collaboration technologies. Increased use of collaboration technologies of course does not necessarily mean more effective collaboration, but it is good start for improving effectiveness. As they say in manufacturing: Get the damn machine running first, we will worry about the yield after.
Lokesh Datta
Reader Comments (1)
I posted this question on LinkedIn: Is email a collaboration tool? In a recent survey, 2/3 of the respondents found email to be the most effective tool for collaboration. What does it say about the current state of collaboration?
I received interesting responses that I would like to share.
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Barbara Weaver Smith, Founder and President, The Whale Hunters
Great question--and I applaud your study!
I believe people choose email as the most effective collaboration tool because it's the only tool that they and their collaborators all use in day to day work.
Email is clunky, disorganized, distracting, not integrated with a project-or-collaboration website--as opposed to a web-based collaboration platform. But although "everyone" knows how to use email, many fewer people have had training and opportunity to use a more robust virtual communication platform. And therefore people prefer to be pinged by their email--or to have their collaborating partners pinged--rather than learning to manage their own time to check in to a web platform or manage how new activity is reported to them.
I prefer a web-based environment for my own collaborative projects. But I have found that a real learning curve is required to get other people on board. It takes awhile before they can see the advantages of searchability, document sharing, time management, content management, and project history that are more readily available in a web environment rather than email.
See: http://www.q2learning.com
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Michael McKenna, Consultant, Trainer & Planner Providing Real World Solutions to Help Orgs Stay in Operation Despite Risk of Disruption.
Yes, email is a collaboration tool. So is the bed of a pickup truck, the telephone, Twitter, SharePoint, Buzz, etc.
The current state of collaboration is no different than the previous state of collaboration...if the focus is too much on the form than on the substance, then the object will ultimately suffer.
I have had robust, highly effective collaborations over email and also lousy time wasting efforts spent face-to-face. The tool used to collaborate is seldom the impediment OR the solution.
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Christine Hueber, at ChristineHueber dot com
Absolutely ... it's how I primarily collaborate with my clients, partners and vendors.
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Frank Feather, ►CEO NorthStar ►Ex-Banker ►Futurist ►Speaker ►Your Future is My Business
That is because it is simple, and it works.
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Anne K Scott, Business transformation, Technology Delivery and Intuitive Leadership Professional
Yes it is a collaboration tool because that is how it is being used; however, it is a tool that has been commandeered rather than designed for purpose. There is are opportunities for far more efficient collaboration tools with much more recent developments than email which is a relatively old technology based on what is i.e. the postal system rather that what we would truly love to have. Out of the box thinking and vision is key. In the meantime email holds the fort but there is so much more to come.
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Jeff Cooper, IT Infrastructure Manager at Abbott Vascular Devices
I disagree with Barbara Weaver Smith. As an example, Microsoft Outlook is well-integrated with MS SharePoint and MS Project, and SharePoint and Project are also well-integrated such that tasks, tracking, etc can be passed back and forth among the three products.
Email as collaboration will evolve. While it is the most prevalent / most popular today, as a younger workforce enters the market, email will become secondary to social networking, instant message, text message, etc. As an anecdote, my daughter is 10 and does not have an email account (nor has she asked for one). But she and all of her friends have text.
Finally, consider if you asked this same question 10 - 15 years ago. I bet the survey would have found that most folks considered the telephone as the primary tool for collaboration.
PS. One other comment...Google has a "Wave" product that seems to blend email and instant messaging into a next generation tool. https://wave.google.com/
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Barrett Peterson, CPA, Consultant and Senior Financial Executive, experienced in Accounting, Finance, Planning, IT, M&A, Operations Mgmt.
I suspect "tool" is the key here, and email is an effective tool. Like all tools, it enhances/documents/facilitates the collaboration process. Email does not supplant or become the definition of collaboration. Most good processes employ tools and this finding just confirms that modern methods are unsurprisingly finding their way into and informing all human interactions.
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Harry Cobbs, End User at NA
Definitely yes! Email is the simplest tool you can acquire for team collaboration. Some other collaboration tool an organization can have are a feature-packed virtual pbx phone system, unified communication system, unified messaging system, etc.
See: http://virtualphonesystem.blogetery.com/category/unified-communication/ and http://virtualphonesystem.blogetery.com/category/unified-messaging/
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Wallace Jackson, Multimedia Producer and i3D Programmer for Acrobat 3D PDF, JavaFX, Mobile & Virtual Worlds
It says the current state of e-mail collaboration needs to go to a 2nd level with GoogleWave
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Darin Bush, IT Support Analyst Contractor at Stiefel Laboratories
I created and maintained a Lotus Notes knowledge base that did all of it's communication through the email client. As for answering the question, I know that might be a backwards answer - the dbase used email - but it was very collaborative.
I know I can Google this, but, in the context of this question, how do you define "a collaboration tool"? If you can send an email to any number of people instantly, doesn't this qualify?
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Nkateko Okwera, Project Manager at ICF Macro
Email is a collaboration tool. I have seen people build extensive methods of collaborating through outlook. That being said – is it the best collaboration tool? I don’t think so. When I think of collaboration, I think of some core requirements:
• Is there version control on documents?
• Can multiple people work on the same resource at the same time?
• Is it accessible anywhere?
• Does it support multiple levels of organization?
• Can you funnel all of your information through one person with email?
• Can you actually create a sort of site map to meet all resources?
• How does it ensure that you have the most up to date information?
• How much of the organization is managed manually vs. programmatically?
• Can multiple people look at the same thing at the same time?
• Can files be stored in a single location?
Email is often used as a collaboration tool, but it seems to be more of a vehicle to support online collaboration. On its own – it is far from sufficient – but without email – would collaboration be possible? For example, without email – how would you receive alerts that you are supposed to do something? How would you search through past communications? How would you send files or even notify someone that there’s a file they need to see?
Having spent years working with SharePoint and supporting people in using it as a collaboration tool, I can understand why people feel email is the most efficient collaboration tool. For starters, most people have more number of years of experience with email – compared to other collaboration tools. Often collaboration tools/suites are deployed without adequate training or follow-up support. The learning curve alone often cripples the usage of such tools. Email is quick – it’s right at your finger tips – and best of all – you already know how to use it! Unfortunately many people make their decisions about the right tool to use with that same logic. Without a real assessment of user needs, no collaboration tool will truly be utilized fully.