Cool Down (5 page)

The questions below are intended as a self-assessment. They work best if:

Additional copies of the entire
How to Cool Down
collection with extra space for writing in your answers are available for download at the
Cool Down
section of my website:
www.bristall.com
. Just look for the Blue Tortoise.

Next Step: Compile this information and discuss with your mentor.

 

 

In May of 2000, the then-president of Disney, Michael Eisner, spoke to the graduating class at the University of California at Berkeley to an audience that consisted of many technically oriented new graduates. In an era when the dot-com boom was still hot, he surprised many by saying some rather unflattering things about email. He viewed it as a technology that would pose a danger to the success of companies and organizations, due to the very thing that made it popular—its immediacy. Mr. Eisner said that this would lead to a flood of unscreened emotion, with messages being sent before they were ready and information being mailed to the wrong people.

He was right, of course, and since that speech was made, the environment in which work is done and business transacted has grown, with new tools, techniques, and relationships appearing regularly. And that's where the problem lies. It has to do with the way in which speed, combined with the act of tending to surface-level priorities, discourages innovation. It reduces our ability to find new and better ways to do things, to win customers, or to enhance productivity, simply because there is so little time for reflection, communication, and shared learning. I call this overall concept the Silo Effect, since it represents a blinding of intellectual capacity and a reduction of the potential for full productivity. In this chapter, I wish to illustrate the main components that go into building our silo, so that in later chapters we can set up some realistic plans to break the silo down and capitalize on the human and technological brilliance of our age.

Information overload is not a new concept. Most people are aware of it, have experienced it, and accept that it comes with the territory. It's part of work. One of the primary carriers of information overload is, of course, email. It, too, is accepted as part of work, both as a tool for getting things done and as an obstacle to that same goal. But few know how to deal with it properly, or why they should. It's just there, and we use it.

The problem lies not with the connectivity aspect, but with its speed. Email is written fast, it is sent fast, and the expectation is that we must respond to it fast. Not only do people tend to overrule the importance of their current tasks in order to respond to the demands of email, the momentum that this creates carries through to other activities until they are all processed and dealt with in a similar, hurried, surface-level fashion. Reflex and reaction start to count more than anything else.

Most people work with their email system always on, and although typical volumes of inbound messages vary from person to person, what everyone has in common is that they arrive at unpredictable times, they announce their arrival with some sort of distracting signal, and, like a tantalizing unwrapped present, they demand to be opened. Consequently, it's not a surprise that the
Infomania
study described in Chapter 1, with its headline-grabbing parallels to marijuana use, highlight a sobering fact: It's not just addiction to email that is costing us; it's the mental erosion that comes from being an information junkie that is causing the longer-term harm. People are just not able to think clearly when their brains are impaired through constant high-speed distractions.

Is email all bad? No, not at all. It's a great tool, just as a hammer is a great tool. But when it becomes a source of distraction, it descends to the same level of inefficiency as a hammer does when used by a clumsy carpenter—painfully unproductive.

There are many people, of course, who would argue strongly that email is essential to business, and that their job depends on timely response. That may be. But then again, it might not be, entirely. When people are asked to consider the nature of their email messages and what impact they have on their day-to-day success, they are often able to place the mail into two groups, with messages that are truly urgent making up the minority, and those that are not urgent making up the majority. The real answer may have more to do with a person's sense of “customer service urgency,” or perhaps their fear of repercussions if the expectations of the sender are not met immediately. (The terms “customer,” and “client” are used in this book to define not just external members of the business community who pay for your products and/or services, but also those on the inside—people you report to, who report to you, or with whom you interact on a regular basis.)