A World Without Email?
In A World Without Email, Cal Newport argues that the failure of organizations to optimize the processes of knowledge work leads to waste. The basic story is this: Organizations added computers, email, and other messaging technology to knowledge work in the last few decades, but few thought about optimizing how we should use those tools to be most productive.
The result is that the default management system is the email inbox, which is a really inefficient approach.
More importantly, the need to constantly monitor one’s inbox leads to what Newport calls The Hyperactive Hive Mind—“A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services.”
And that’s what makes these systems so insidious. Not only are they inefficient, the “ongoing conversation” causes us to be constantly wrapped up in their inefficiency!
What Can Leaders Do?
Newport argues that we should introduce far more robust processes to knowledge work to “dramatically increase performance and make the work much less draining.”
He lists three properties of effective processes:
“It’s easy to review who is working on what and how it’s going.”
“Work can unfold without significant amounts of unscheduled communication.”
“There’s a known procedure for updating work assignments as the process progresses.”
A critical phrase in those properties is unscheduled communication. To Newport, a world without email is not one without communication. Instead, it’s about structuring that communication in time (e.g., standups, regular check-ins) and space (e.g., kanban boards) so that you free up colleagues to focus on the actual work rather than responding to constant chatter.
It’s that effect that unleashes the productivity of the team. Newport says:
“Notice, nothing about these properties restricts the knowledge worker’s autonomy in figuring out how they get their work done; the focus remains on coordinating this work. Also notice that these properties are unlikely to lead to stifling bureaucracy, as the processes they produce are optimized to reduce the overhead—in terms of both context shifts and time—surrounding the actual act of producing valuable things.”
Caution: Radical Change Required
The shift from an unstructured process and the hyperactive hive mind to one that’s efficient isn’t easy. Individual teams, for example, sometimes experiment with tactics like No Meeting Fridays or No Emails After 8pm.
But these types of minor interventions aren’t likely to be successful. Newport writes: “we cannot tame [the hyperactive hive mind] with minor hacks—we need to replace it with a better workflow.”
That is, a leader must change the underlying set of incentives and behaviors. It’s not enough to eliminate meetings on Friday if everyone’s working assumption is that meetings are the best way to collaborate. It’ll simply make Monday to Thursday busier!
The same goes for holding the evening emails, just to unleash an avalanche of them at 8am the next morning.
For me, the solution is to be bolder when crafting experiments. Try eliminating all email and all meetings for three weeks, and see what happens. And instead of telling the team what you’re not doing, challenge them to craft new solutions that help everyone perform at a higher level.