It’s not every day you encounter an idea that fundamentally challenges your existing mental models … and is still so compelling that you can’t find a way to dismiss it.
I came across just such an idea in a podcast (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-cal-newport.html) discussing a book by Cal Newport (https://www.calnewport.com/books/a-world-without-email/) that I’ve ordered.
But I haven’t waited to read the book to experiment with some of its ideas at Freedom.
Before we get into our experiments, for those of you who haven’t already followed the above links and fully digested the relevant content, here is a quick breakdown of the big idea:
The invention of email disrupted work by lowering the effort needed to bother lots of coworkers all at once.
No one really considered how this new technology *should* be best adopted—everyone just started using it because it was easier and faster.
Companies—again without much conscious planning—started relying on email instead of business process engineering in knowledge work. Communication had become so easy that everyone felt that the organization could just sort of muddle through together as new challenges arose.
The big idea here is to challenge this status quo and to question if we’ve all just stumbled into the optimal way of knowledge work by happenstance … or perhaps we should try to find a better way to work.
There are some interesting lines of inquiry that arise from stepping back to consider the way we all work.
First, does this way of work make us happier? Email makes us feel happier in the short term—each inbound message feeds some deep-seated social need for communication. Someone needs me! I’m important and useful! our email seems to whisper to us. But over time and as inbox volume grows, the inbox begins to feel like tyrant. We also have deep-seated social needs not to ignore members of our tribe—it’s rude. But with the daily onslaught of email, failure to respond is eventually inevitable. Over time, email starts to whisper a different message to us: “You’re failing.”
Second, does this way of work make us more productive? Again, email makes us feel more productive in the short run—we are accomplishing something! Inbox zero! Perhaps it is easier for me to mock this as an accomplishment since I’m currently at inbox 3,983 … just in the unread status. But does getting through our emails for the day create value? Certainly not intrinsically; it depends on the tasks we’ve completed processing those emails. One could easily spend all day on emails and reach the nirvana that is inbox zero without accomplishing a single productive task. In fact, if you thoughtlessly forward emails to a few dozen colleagues, you might have caused more work for the organization without solving any problems.
Sidebar on Slack and similar tools: These software tools all have the same fundamental strength and weakness as email. They are easy and feed a certain short-term need for socialization. The benefits to longer-term happiness and productivity are far less proven. Slack’s website has a handful of “why Slack” marketing messages, but none of them make the claim that companies using Slack are more productive.
So, if we accept this argument that we may have stumbled into a non-optimal way of work, what do we do about it? Well, the first step is to experiment to see if we can find a better way. Cal Newport pointed out that Henry Ford experimented on many different ways of manufacturing before perfecting the assembly line—why should knowledge work not require similar experimentation?
At Freedom, we are concluding a 2-week experiment today on a fairly radical way of work:
We have all turned off almost notifications and distractions from email or Microsoft Teams.
Checking emails or Teams rooms will only be expected three times per day—at the start and end of the workday and at lunch.
Any email interaction that would require more than a single reply should be replaced in favor of a quick scheduled meeting. This is the inverse of this-meeting-could-have-been-an-email frustration. We notice the inefficiency of useless meetings, but what about the inefficiency of this-30-email-reply-thread-could-have-been-a-15-minute-meeting?
Use of direct chatting or @ notifications in Teams rooms should only be taken when at a complete work stoppage.
It has been an interesting couple of weeks. Once or twice, I caught myself feeling frustration that I couldn’t get instantly something from a colleague and had to wait for a couple of hours—the horror! But those delays didn’t ever matter and my coworkers responded every time by their next scheduled check in. A more surprising downside has been the loneliness. Teams chats have been a way of feeling connected during remote work, and I missed that more than I expected. But conversely, there’s no denying I’ve been more productive on tasks that require sustained concentration—like this blog post. I’ve broken down twice and peeked at email while writing, but no one from Freedom has interrupted the effort.
We’re debriefing in an all-hands afternoon, and I may post a follow up blog with that feedback or about future experiments as we keep seeking a better way to work—I doubt we nailed it on our first attempt.
But I am confident this is experimentation is worth taking. And optimizing Freedom’s internal processes is just the first step. As DAM consultants, we assist our clients through business process re-engineering in their creative and marketing technology practices. This is never a simple task, and the change management journey always extends beyond the scope of an initial implementation project. Often these challenges have led Freedom to define this portion of our services as a gentle push or even just roadmap for change. And frankly, this is understandable cowardice: measuring a consulting engagement’s success on achieving transformational change is wildly ambitious.
But this idea has challenged me, and it may be time for some wild ambition. More to come on this topic…