The Tyranny of Email
The Tartar Steppe, voted one of Le Monde’s 100 books of the century, tells the story of an army officer who spends his entire life at a fort, preparing for an attack by a barbarian horde that appears only when he is at his death bed. Today, this barbarian horde is the infamous email from a superior expecting an immediate response. The scene writes itself. A young finance professional is at lunch with her group of friends, or a consultant husband is at a date night with his wife, but neither is present as every 10-15 minutes, they subconsciously look at their phone like Gollum at the Ring of Power, for an email that will generally never come. This leaves everyone unhappy- the individual who feels leashed by their phone, their friends/family who do not get undivided attention, and I would even suggest the superiors in an organization, who would much prefer for their employees to be able to disengage periodically (I am an optimist in humanity). However, the modern incentives in email responsiveness have led us to a bizarre outcome that no one intended- a modern-day shock collar in many ways- and this point is criminally under addressed when we talk about company culture.
I suspect email expectations in most organizations are so bad due to a classic case of Taleb’s dictatorship of the intolerant minority. A company’s email culture will be set by its most impatient/demanding participants. Let’s say your direct boss is very understanding, kind, patient person, and let’s say even their boss is as well. However, if the person above them expects an immediate response, this impatience quickly rolls down the chain, forcing the bosses below to comply with this one boss’ requests. Therefore, this is a classic case of the mad man setting the rules- underlings must be as responsive as to the most impatient superior in the organization expectations. For the underling, this becomes a classic Type 1/Type 2 error skew situation. Not checking your phone regularly and not being responsive to an important email could have serious negative consequences in an impatient organization, but checking your phone needlessly has very minimal short-term negative consequences, even if the detriment long-term can be significant.
A crucial element of this unfortunate consequence skew is the so-called virtue of responsiveness. In general, we all prefer people to be responsive. We want to be acknowledged that what we are saying matters, and people are aware of what needs to happen. Especially in the case of young employees, responsiveness can indeed be a leading indicator of how seriously they take their job, and in some jobs, responsiveness in certain periods of times is necessary to success. But too much emphasis on quick responses to emails means you are more likely to get off-the-cuff responses and immediate reactions than thoughtful answers. Therefore, that begs the question, would the emailer/superior prefer an immediate response with 70% information, or a thought-out response two days later? This is where a proper email culture and practices should step in.
So enough complaining. Here’s what I suggest companies should include as part of their culture, starting in orientation training:
1. Clearly state expected response time to emails and make it mandatory up and down the organization.
I would suggest 36 hours. Basically, would require that people check email 1x/day.
2. Clearly establish alternative communication method for quicker expected responses
Text/WhatsApp would lead to an expected response within 3 hours.
Phone calls are immediate response- call it an hour
Now, you the reader should cry, you are just replacing an email with a phone call and/or text! How is that any better? Well, here are a couple reasons why:
1. It is a heckuva lot higher hurdle for someone to pick up a phone and call someone outside of work hours than email them. Are you really going to call during dinner? Or could this wait till tomorrow morning?
2. You receive a heckuva lot more emails than phone calls/one-off text messages during the day- average person receives 80 emails/day on a workday
This makes it much more likely that people have notifications/ringers turned on for calls/texts than emails, so they do not need to check their phone/open app to know someone is trying to reach them.
Wouldn’t these small steps result in a much more civilized life and workspace environment? By removing email from the world of immediate gratification, I believe companies will significantly reduce stress and misunderstandings between employees on urgency. And in general, by setting better boundaries for ourselves on how responsive we are, I think we will find ourselves enjoying the present more, rather than waiting for a barbarian email that may just never come.