Blog posts in Communications

Friday Donut tip: stop email ping-pong games dead

Every Friday afternoon we bring you a great business IT tip. From nuggets that make repetitive tasks easier to simple ways to banish business tech annoyances, we’re here to help.

If there’s something you’d like our help with, send an email to info@itdonut.co.uk or just leave a comment on this post. We’ll try and cover it in a future IT Donut tip.

Stop playing email ping-pong!

Every round of email ping-pong puts another message in your inbox for you to deal with. If you’re trying to put a stop to email overload, it’s completely counterproductive.

Here are three tips to help you avoid getting lost in a pointless game of email ping-pong:

1. Think in fives. Five sentences, five questions, five lines long. If you’re trying to send emails that are effective and to the point, think five.
2. Include a clear action statement. If you’re trying to accomplish something with your email, be clear and specific about what you want the recipient to do. Don’t leave them room to come back with questions.
3. Tell them you don’t want a reply. It’s easy to get trapped in a repetitive loop of ‘thank yous’. Draw a line by telling recipients they don’t need to bother replying. You can even put NRN (‘no reply necessary’) in the subject line.

Do you have a strategy to reduce the amount of email in your inbox? Leave a comment and share it with us.

• Keep things secure when you work remotely
• Control what happens when you shut your laptop lid
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Monica Seeley is an email and productivity expert who runs Mesmo. Learn more about email overload and email etiquette on her website.

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Now is the time to clean up your inbox

According to research, 2.8 million emails per second were sent in 2010. Given that incredible figure (I wonder who counted them all), it’s no surprise that email overload is an ever-growing problem.

You probably know the feeling. You start work in the morning by opening your email. It takes an hour – or more – to deal with all the queries in your inbox. And then you seem to spend most of the rest of the day replying to replies to the email you sent first thing. Confusing, isn’t it?

Your inbox is a source of stress

My own data indicates that almost half of us in the UK receive 50 – 70 emails a day. Some people receive 180 or even more! For all the noise about social media becoming the communications channel of choice, the numbers show that business email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Yet most of us need less than half of the email we receive. Just think of all the pointless one-line replies, the emails you were copied in on out of politeness and, of course, the newsletters, the special offers, the junk, the spam you have no intention of reading but which still takes time and effort to sort through and delete.

Email overload takes up people’s time and causes stress. But there’s another reason businesses need to address this problem: money.

The bottom line to email overload

On average, we each lose an hour a day because of ineffective email use. At an hourly cost of £20, that’s about £4,200 of lost productivity for every single person a year. Does your business really need that in the current economic climate?

Many companies are waking up to this. Volkswagen has taken an extreme route, deciding that the best way to give its people some respite is to block out-of-hours email altogether. Fine, but doesn’t that just move the problem to the next morning rather than solving it completely?

You can do a lot with better planning. Cut down on the number of unnecessary emails you send and be realistic about replying. Take a stand against the culture of replying instantly to everything and instead develop a system to help you identify which emails are important, which can wait, and which should go straight in the bin.

Clean out your inbox next week

Together, we can put an end to email overload. And the work starts right there, in the folder marked ‘inbox’. If you’re willing to give it a go, I can help: my company, Mesmo, is running Clean Out Your Inbox Week – and it starts today!

Together with fellow email expert Marsha Egan I’ll be offering hints, tips and online tools to help you get on top of your email. We’ll explain how to get rid of email noise, what to do to prioritise emails and why email etiquette matters.

It’s completely free and you might even get the chance to win a prize! To get more information and take part, head over to my blog.

• Five email blunders to avoid
• Streamline your email to save time
• Ten ways to use email effectively

Monica Seeley is an email and productivity expert who runs Mesmo. Learn more about email overload and email etiquette on her website.

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When it comes to email replies, is faster better?

A few years ago you might have expected to receive a response to an email within a few days, or even a week. However, a recent survey of 100 organisations conducted by Mesmo, my consultancy, reveals that a quarter of people expect a response within the hour. Over a third of people expect a response within two hours, and over two thirds within half a day.

In fact, only a quarter of people think it’s acceptable to wait a day for a response. A tiny seven per cent of people are prepared to wait two days.

We’re making unnecessary mistakes

These expectations are driven by our ‘always on’ culture of email, smart phones and social media. We pressure ourselves into thinking that most email has to be answered as soon as it arrives.

But actually, it’s a bit like driving: the faster we respond, the more damage we do when we make mistakes. We are confusing speed of email response with effectiveness – in essence, we’re allowing the technology to dictate how we work.

Putting ourselves under pressure to respond to emails quickly only adds to the email overload that’s rife in companies today. It’s time to reduce this overload and set more realistic timescales for replies – allowing enough time for a considered response.

Interestingly, the pressure to reply quickly seems to lie in the mind of the recipient. I’ve interviewed many senior managers who have been surprised by how quickly people respond to their emails.

The survey bears this out. It shows that most respondents (83%) felt that internal senders expect a quicker reply than external senders, and that 87% believed senior managers expected a faster response than junior managers.

The devices we use for our email play a role too. Over three quarters of respondents strongly believed that people picking up email on smart phones expect a faster reply than those dealing with email on their computer.

We don’t give people enough time to reply properly

The survey also highlights double standards around email response times. Although most of us now expect a response within half a day, 60% of respondents admitted they only sometimes left people sufficient time to respond to their emails and only a third (39%) of survey respondents thought they ‘frequently’ left enough time.

In other words, we’re sending messages requesting a fast response, even though we know we’re not giving the person on the other end enough time to craft a considered reply. This is a worrying trend, as emails often need a substantive response.

Break the cycle

It can become a vicious circle. The more you respond quickly, the more people who send you emails will expect fast replies.

To help break this cycle, we could all do with improving our email etiquette. For instance, you can add a line to your email signature stating that you check your email at regular intervals, but not as each email arrives.

Alternatively, use an auto response with the same message. Or take a lead from organisations that state on their website how long a response will take. You can certainly  create a framework for use within your company, and even make it part of your email policy.

Respond in haste and repent at leisure has been the mantra of many who have found their emails used as evidence in a dispute. An incorrect or badly-thought-through response can be costly. This survey confirms that it’s time for us all to recalibrate our email expectations.

• Ten ways to use email effectively
• Streamline your email to save time
• Email blunders you really don’t want to make

Monica Seeley is an email overload and email etiquette specialist who runs Mesmo, a company offering training, coaching and other consultancy services to help businesses use technology more effectively.

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Is your email based on out of date technology?

We all rely on email for our business so its important to have something that is reliable, backed up and that lets you work on the move seamlessly. However I come across many people who are using POP3 without realizing the major limitations. If you need to check your email in more than one place - which is standard these days - it’s important to explore your options and upgrade.

POP3 mailboxes get set up when new domain names are purchased without much thought about the other options available. The problem is that kind of email sits on your web host’s server and gets sent to your laptop or smartphone. However, any deleting or sending etc that you do on one device cannot be updated to another. This causes people to set up all sorts of complicated systems to copy themselves on emails and to then check and clear in boxes in different locations- time consuming, frustrating and very unnecessary.

So, what are your options? IMAP and Exchange are much better as they allow email syncing between devices. Some accounts can be upgraded to IMAP which allows emails to sync however better still is to go with Google Apps or Office365.

With Google Apps, you will also have the ability to sync email, calendar and contacts with the Google interface and many love it for its ease of use and third party apps for extra functionality. Personally I use Microsoft Exchange Online with Outlook. It is the most stable and robust platform to use for email and allows you to sync not just your email but also calendar and contacts to as many devices as you want. Microsoft recently released Office365, making Exchange Online accessible to single users for the first time. For just £4+VAT a month you get seamless syncing all your devices, as well as an Outlook web app offering familiar Outlook functionality through a web browser should you ever need to work from an unfamiliar machine.

With Gmail and Office365 there are now 2 great, cost effective, solutions that make the most of the cloud and increase productivity. So if you are still on POP3 my question to you is why?

Francesca Geens runs an IT consultancy called Digital Dragonfly, which specializes in one-person businesses. She is especially interested in productivity and the use of information technology to improve people’s day-to-day business lives. Find out more about how Digital Dragonfly can help you at www.digitaldragonfly.co.uk

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How to avoid the hidden costs of Unified Communications

Improved access to sales partners, accelerated business processes and increased productivity - Unified Communications (UC) technology promises a wide range of advantages that have signalled the demise of traditional telephone systems for many modern businesses.

However, not every new implementation actually delivers what it claims, because the support and maintenance costs can be much higher than expected.

What companies typically expect from UC and why maintenance costs can spiral?

If you require integrated fax into your new phone system, the ability to link in to employees’ mobiles or perhaps the need to enable conference calls, you are going to need a separate IT server for each of these options. You may also want to control your telephone from the PC (also known as CTI or computer telephony integration), set up voice mail or introduce a touch-tone system such as press 1 for sales and so on. Already you will need three further servers.

Managing and buying more hardware can be expensive

So, as well as the server for the main phone system, at least a handful of other servers will be required depending on the scope of applications used. Not only that, but if you buy servers from different manufacturers then each will have a different type of administration and user interface.

Then, when a new user is set up or settings are changed, this leads to duplicate, triplicate or more modifications. A simple username change rapidly becomes a small IT project. If you don’t have an IT manager in-house then you could become heavily reliant on a third party provider.

Key conclusion: More servers equates to significantly more maintenance and administration overhead.

What happens if you are a smaller company with limited IT knowledge?

If you want to minimise the time and money managing your Unified Communications solution, then a fully software-based solution could be the answer. They offer all the performance features of a complete Unified Communications solution but only need a single server.

With a single server approach you can drastically reduce the maintenance plus it’s faster to install in the first place. It also presents fewer problems on the compatibility side, so in the event of upgrades you don’t need to make multiple changes to multiple servers, so you can always take advantage of new functionality that can be simply downloaded via the Internet.

With a regular UC or phone system, much of the on-going maintenance changes known as MACs (Moves & Changes) are made to individual user profiles. Employees may leave the organisation or new extensions need to be created as new staff join. If you are a fast-growing company then these kinds of changes are going to happen on a regular basis.

If you go with a solution with multiple servers then all these changes will need to be made to each one, whereas with one server changes need only be entered once and are then universally applied.

Capitalising on the benefits of unified communications

If you’re looking to upgrade you phone system, UC can deliver countless business benefits such as

• Reduced annual maintenance costs
• Support for remote and mobile working so that workers can be reached wherever they are via a single number
• Improved customer service through speedier response and integrating your phone system with other key applications in the business e.g. CRM system
• Reduced office overheads by supporting flexible/home working
• Centralised reception for multiple sites
• Advanced call routing
• Save on travel expenses and improve collaboration with built-in video and audio conferencing
• Presence information so you can see which colleagues are available, whether in the office or on the road
• Fast-track routing of high value calls
• Business continuity – users can login and be available to answer calls from any location

If you’re considering a move to unified communications, remember to ask your reseller how much maintenance will be involved and what the on-going charges will be. If you ask for a ‘single-server’ approach you will find that over the long-term your support costs will be lower.

Michael Thomson is Director Engineering & Product Management at unified communications vendor, Swyx

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Email, phone hacking and your company

One of this year’s biggest news stories has been the phone hacking scandal. One of the first celebrities to settle with the now-defunct News of the World was Sienna Miller, and I’ve always believed the newspaper was keen to settle because she demanded to see all emails relating to herself.

However, it was only a matter of time before others affected by the scandal demanded to see such emails too. And as result, it recently emerged that HCL Technologies – a firm that managed some of the News of the World’s IT systems – was asked to delete emails nine times between April 2010 and July 2011. 

Lessons you can learn

Although I totally condemn the phone hacking saga, there are lessons to be learnt about how we use email. Indeed, the use of emails as evidence highlights three issues:

• Emails can’t ever really be destroyed. Under current UK law, you’re allowed to destroy emails. But in practice, you can bet that someone, somewhere will have a copy printed off or saved to a file. Once you’ve sent an email, there’s no way of knowing who it’s been forwarded on to or where it’s been stored.
• You need to be vigilant about what you say in emails. Careless messages sent in haste can be costly. For instance, if you reply ‘yes’ when a client sends an email telling you that you’ve made a mistake, you leave yourself little room to negotiate. Sending anything that could be seen as defamatory could also be costly.
• Email is as open as a postcard. You can bet your life that someone who shouldn’t have has seen those News of the World emails. Maybe some were forwarded on, found on a printer or simply read on screen over the recipient’s shoulder. There’s nothing inherently secure about email.

Will email law change?

You may also have heard that there has been talk of changing the UK laws relating to the retention and archiving of emails. In future, businesses could be compelled to keep all their emails and make them available on demand. That brings its own set of problems.

Ultimately, these things all confirm that you really need to think before you hit send. If you’re in any doubt about the content of your email, talk first and email afterwards.

Protecting your business

As well as thinking carefully about when and how you send emails, there are other things you can do to protect your business:

• Make sure you have an up-to-date, effective email acceptable usage policy. This helps reduce the chance of a breach of security occurring.
• Create an email best practice charter and offer your staff training in email use. Email seems so straightforward that many companies neglect training – yet it can make your employees more efficient and reduce the security risks.

There’s a tool to help you create an acceptable usage policy, plus a template for an email charter over on my own website.

(I’m not, of course, condoning any kind of hacking, whether into someone’s email, voicemail or anything else. I just think this scandal has highlighted some interesting issues about how businesses use and manage their email.)

• Streamline your email to save time
• Choose the right kind of business email system
• Ten ways to use email effectively

To learn more about using email more effectively either go to one of Dr Monica Seeley’s new ninety minute Brilliant Email Master Classes or get a copy of her book, ‘Brilliant Email: How to improve productivity and save time’.

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Switching off from email in the always-on world

Put the smart phone away! (Image: Gulltaggen on Flickr)

With laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices, your email is always with you - wherever you are. So how can you get away from it without appearing rude to people who expect an instant response? Is it even realistic to always be available?

It's interesting that most surveys, including my own, show that we stay connected not so much because people expect us to be available but because we think they expect us to be available. That reflects either our inability to switch off and delegate, or an equally worrying 'email addiction'.

To check your level of email addiction use my email addiction tool.

The key to surviving in this 24/7/365 world of business is to manage people's expectations. Here are five ways to take time off from email:

1. Check your level of email addiction to make sure your reluctance to switch off is not driven primarily by your own assumptions rather than other people's expectations. More on how to deal with addiction in a future column.
2. Use your out of office message no matter whether you're away on business or holiday. Set a safe, simple message saying you are out of the office with limited email access. Offer a point of contact for urgent matters and a date when you will reply. Make this the day after you actually get back, so you have time to catch up.
3. Ask someone else to manage your email whilst you take a break. If you're a one-person business or don't have someone you can ask, consider using a virtual PA service.
4. Lock your smart phone away and take a conventional mobile phone with you which only handles voice and text messages.
5. If you do take a smart phone or laptop with you, only check your email once or twice a day - preferably at the end of the day. At all other times, shut down your email software and turn new message notifications off.

We all like to think we are indispensible but at the end of the day most of us need time to recharge our batteries and switch off. Staying switched on around the clock has been shown to reduce our overall effectiveness - and never mind the health implications!

Be honest. Ask yourself if there's ever been an email which would cause a disaster if you didn't deal with it immediately. For most of us, the answer is no. And that means there are alternatives to always being connected.

For more ways to take time out without jeopardising your business and professional image either go to one of Dr Monica Seeley’s ninety minute Brilliant Email Master Classes or get a copy of her latest book, ‘Brilliant Email: How to improve productivity and save time’.

• Choose the right type of business email system
• Is free business email right for your business?
• Streamline your email and save time

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The broadband lottery: here's why your internet connection might be slower than you'd hoped

Is your broadband slower than this? (Image: RogueSun Media under Creative Commons)

Broadband companies have been criticised for advertising connection speeds that only a fraction of customers ever actually get. But it's not always easy for them to predict what speed an individual customer will receive. Sebastien Lahtinen from thinkbroadband explains.

Imagine you run manufacturing business that uses widgets as a component. You see an advertisement on a website from a company offering to supply 'up to 24 widgets' each month for a fee of £35 per month.

However, when your first delivery arrives you find it only includes nine widgets. On querying the error, the supplier's response is that they only ever promised 'up to' 24 widgets.

It sounds confusing, unfair and illogical. Yet this is exactly how most broadband services are sold. And the grounds for it are actually quite reasonable.

What is broadband?

Broadband describes what were considered fast internet connections at a time when slow connections were the norm. Most UK broadband is delivered using DSL technology (most commonly ADSL, which stands for asymmetric digital subscriber line). This uses old-fashioned copper telephone cables to get an internet connection into your business.

There are two main causes of slow broadband speeds and it is important to distinguish between them.

1. Congestion

Congestion can affect all internet connections. It simply means that too many people are trying to transfer too much data at once. Like having too many cars on the roads, it leads to delays in data reaching its destination.

Each broadband supplier has to strike a balance between capacity and congestion. To keep costs down, many broadband suppliers - especially those in the price-sensitive consumer market - operate a high contention ratio. This is the number of connections being sold compared to the total available capacity.

At peak times, broadband suppliers with a high contention ratio may not be able to service all customers at full speed.

To alleviate this problem, some companies implement traffic management systems. These can differentiate between different kinds of internet traffic, ensuring that when you're using your connection for something that requires a fast response - like video calls or online gaming - you get given priority.

Many business broadband packages have a low contention ratio. However, even so, your broadband supplier can't guarantee good end-to-end performance. The internet is, essentially, a network of connected networks. Your broadband supplier only has control over their bit of it. If congestion is a problem elsewhere, they can't do anything about it.

2. Technology

One of the main problems with ADSL broadband is that it relies on old copper telephone lines which were never designed for digital communications.

Signals degrade as they travel along the line, meaning that the further you are from your local telephone exchange, the slower your broadband service will be. In general, if you're within 2km of the telephone exchange then you will receive the top speeds, with a sharp fall thereafter depending on the type of ADSL technology used.

The upshot of this is that ADSL broadband suppliers can't market a service with a definite speed until they know the exact telephone line on which it will be used.

Before you order, most providers will give you an estimate of the speed they expect you to achieve. Unfortunately, this can't be guaranteed either, particularly as broadband providers don't own the phone lines they use.

They have to pay Openreach (the division of BT which maintains phone lines) for access to your line - and they pay the same regardless of what speed connection your line can support.

Confusing, isn't it?

What this means for you

If you're looking to purchase an internet connection, the key consideration should be how important the connection is to your business.

Every year, more companies are moving from local servers to cloud-based business applications, and from traditional telephone systems to VoIP services.

These applications require a reliable internet connection, so you need to look at not only the headline speed (which, as we've established, doesn't always tell the whole story) and price, but also the level of service on offer.

If your business can't function without internet access, make sure you build some redundancy into your connection - perhaps by using more than one technology or supplier. It's also important you look at upload speeds. These are important for some applications, like VoIP, yet many connections prioritise downloads, at the expense of upload speeds.

About the author

Sebastien Lahtinen is co-founder of thinkbroadband, the UK's first community dedicated to helping users resolve broadband problems. In addition to reporting on the latest broadband news, you can run a  speed test on your current service, view a broadband map showing locations of telephone exchanges, availability and speeds in your area, and check if your internet connection is ready for IPv6.

• More about your business internet connection
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• Internet speed checker

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Apple, can you synchronise your upgrades with mine?

Yesterday saw another super-slick, carefully-managed, hyped-up product announcement from Apple. iPad 2 should be coming to an Apple Store near you on 25 March.

The curious art of upgrade timing

The timing of Apple's product announcements are always interesting. The last iPad was announced on 27 January 2010, and the earliest you could buy it in the UK was 28 May.

The original iPad's successor will be available in the shops less than a year on. And that poses a question that applies to all hardware manufacturers to some extent, but maybe to Apple more than most. With such frequent product releases, is there ever a good time to upgrade your existing hardware?

The battery has had it (the rest is fine)

Back in July 2008, I bought Apple's iPhone 3G, just a few days after launch. I'd held off upgrading my knackered Sony Ericsson handset for months because I figured the iPhone would be special.

And it was. It's the best phone I've ever owned and - despite showing its age now - is just about still going strong.

The battery is the problem. I charge it in the morning, yet by 8pm it’s flatter than the Netherlands. It's not going to last much longer.

(To anyone who criticised the iPhone's lack of removable battery at launch, you were absolutely right. It is ridiculous that you can't easily swap the thing - can you name another phone with the same silly design?)

To upgrade or to wait?

So, with my iPhone on the verge of flickering its last, what I really wanted to hear yesterday was that an updated model was on the way. Then I could have waited for the launch day, evaluated its competitors (because the latest smart phones are apparently much better than my iPhone), then made an informed buying decision.

But as it is, no matter how flat my battery goes, I'm loath to upgrade until I know what's coming from Apple. If the next iPhone is as much of a quantum leap as the iPhone 3G seemed at the time, I'll kick myself for moving to something like the HTC Desire instead of waiting.

It's not that I'm tied to Apple products. I'll happily buy a handset from another manufacturer if it's better. No problem. But I can't quite bring myself to do so knowing that a new iPhone is bound emerge before too much longer.

You might think I've fallen for the Apple hype. But I prefer to see it as making sure I buy at the best time.

Image of an iPhone that definitely needs upgrading from Flickr user respres under a Creative Commons licence.

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Face it — who needs video calling?

Train fares are astronomical and petrol is £1.25 per litre. Fortunately, it’s possible for people to collaborate — and salesmen to meet clients — via audio and web conferencing services. Hurrah! But hang on — what about that other form of conferencing technology?

Video conferencing has been on the market for the last fourteen years, but uptake among SMEs remains poor. Despite manufacturers’ best efforts, SMEs have bypassed it in favour of its conferencing cousins, audio and web, or are showing little enthusiasm for it. Why?  

Audio killed the video star

For small firms, the answer lies in the arcane standards and expensive kit that, until now, have made video conferencing something of a luxury purchase. The value of video is easier to quantify in large multinationals, where savings on air fares can be substantial.

Smaller businesses, by contrast, are only likely to be using video if they have a special need, such as using sign language to communicate or getting instant feedback on prototypes. Otherwise, an audio conference call — or web conference for presentation purposes — is a perfectly adequate alternative.  

2011 — video goes viral

2011 could be different, though — and here’s why: Most video conferencing services are now conducted over the open internet, so there’s no need for separate ISDN lines, extra call costs or desktop boxes. What’s more, those shopping for new kit will find that many new laptops come with front facing cameras and the necessary video calling software.

More importantly, perhaps, are the many tablet PCs launching this year, all with video call capabilities built in. Then there’s the ongoing smart phone revolution which has just seen Skype introduce video calling over 3G networks, and Apple promoting its proprietary FaceTime software on the iPhone 4 (albeit restricted to use over Wi-Fi, at least for now).

So the stars appear to be aligning. In 2011, video calling will be available on all sorts of device — PC-to-PC, mobile-to-mobile, and computer-to-mobile. It might just be worth evaluating the potential benefits of face-to-face video conferencing in your business. And if you do, here’s my prediction...  

You won’t countenance it

Unless you have a specialist requirement, you probably won’t bother with video. For one thing, who needs the grief? A face looking at another face makes perfect sense when it’s what’s actually happening in the real world, but — on screen, and on camera? Suddenly you’re an actor giving a performance.

You gesticulate, nod, smile, grimace or gurn in some other way to animate your face in time with the conversation. Every nervous tic, or each moment of excessive eye contact, has the potential to be grotesquely accentuated or misinterpreted. Who needs that?

Some SMEs will doubtless experiment as costs drop and the kit becomes standard issue, but perhaps video conferencing was always destined for the living room instead of the office. Interacting on screen with a friend or relative is a completely different proposition.

Then again, even at home there are limitations. If I simply phone a friend or relative, we can have a perfectly productive conversation while changing clothes, drawing up a shopping list or putting the kettle on. On a video call, we’d be forced to, well, stare at each other. And that’s just weird.

So there you have it. Despite the shiny new kit, 2011 will NOT be the year in which video conferencing finally rocks the small business world. Now look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.

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Infernal communications

The wires are coming off. Cloud-based services are replacing office-based servers. Leaner and longer lasting laptops are replacing desk-bound PCs. And aggressive mobile phone tariffs could soon make the office landline an endangered species.

More than ever, your employees are free! To work from home, the road, the coffee shop — they’re free, I say!  

The give and take of IT

Except that, if you don’t mind, could you just back off a bit? They’re trying to get some work done. What is it with all this internal communication? The calls, the emails, the endless meetings? Couldn’t you just let them crack on with the thing you’re actually paying them to do?

Ironic, isn’t it? On one hand IT liberates individual workers, while on the other it provides managers with whizzy tools to keep those workers in check. The physical cables may be going, but workers can easily feel just as tethered by endless streams of communications from their bosses.

A sleep of faith?

Workflow guru and co-founder of 37signals, Jason Fried has a radical theory on working; he thinks offices are really bad places for it. Why? Ill considered interruptions by managers, and “toxic, terrible, poisonous” meetings. Managers and meetings —  M&Ms — are the cause of Interruption Hell.

In this intriguing presentation, Fried likens work patterns to sleep patterns: both are phase based, and you’re only really productive once you’ve reached a certain, deep level — you could call it ‘the zone’. If at any pre ‘zone’ stage you get interrupted, you have to commence the process and build up to the ‘zone’ all over again.

What employees want, crave even, is NO DISTRACTIONS! How can you expect your people to do their best work if you’re constantly interrupting them?

Cutting the cacophony

Fried suggests cancelling meetings and introducing ‘no talk’ days. Both make sense. But then he also thinks managers should switch from active communication (meetings, chats, phone calls) to the passive kind (email, instant messaging).

I don’t buy that. For too many people, checking the inbox or silencing the blinking instant message is a natural reaction. After all, that message might be important. When you’re at your PC, it’s like being in control of a car — you know where you’re going but you really must keep checking the mirrors to see what’s coming up.

If it was me, I’d go a step further with ‘no talk’ days that incorporate ‘no email’ and ‘no instant messages’. That way, workers would know up front that there'd be no internal communications or events of any kind, and could crack on accordingly. Why not try it, at least for one day in every week or two?

Just because IT provides so many powerful management and communications tools, it doesn’t mean you should use them. At least, not every day.

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