| McLuhan
and E-mails
E-mails
have only been an official tool of the workplace since the
mid 90s. However, the media philosopher Marshall McLuhan seemed
to be referring to them in the 60s when he said, “We
shape the tools and they in turn shape us.”
E-mails
were designed to make us more productive. We can send and
receive information at the touch of a button. We can write
joint reports with people in other offices – or even
countries. If someone is “on the road,” no problem.
We’ll just send him an e-mail and expect a reply within
a few hours. And we can ignore time zones. They are no longer
a communications problem.
Moreover,
if we think of an idea or a problem to address when office
hours are over, we can pull out our laptops/Blackberries and
handle it immediately.
But McLuhan
was right. This productivity tool is also shaping us. There
is more stress in the workplace today because of e-mails.
People are overusing them — sending both relevant and
irrelevant messages with little thought. The number one complaint
people have with e-mails is that there are just too many.
In fact, handling e-mails has added one hour to the workday.
(If you did the math of this, you’ll be amazed at how
much of a company’s corporate payroll goes toward the
handling of e-mails.)
Part of
the problem with e-mails is that business people have not
been officially trained on how and when to use e-mails. They
don’t know how to mange their inboxes. And they have
not been taught that the rules for letters do not work for
e-mails, nor do they understand that tone is much more important
with e-mails than with other forms of writing.
E-mails
are a wonderful tool. But they are forcing us to think outside
the standard writing/organizing boxes we have previously relied
on for business communications.
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