TamTamy Blog

In the previous post we saw which methods can be followed by every employee and department manager. Here we discuss which tools offered by the company itself can fight the excess of daily emails. In this post we will start from a model we have already analyzed in this blog: the wiki.

Putting a corporate wiki at your employees’ disposal and encouraging them to use it generates a deeper feeling of belonging and attachment to a project in every person directly or indirectly involved, and it also facilitates communications, causing reactions in a first phase before the product is completed and, in a way, irreversible.
Let us take a closer look.

As we have already said, people’s involvement increases as everybody, through a personal account, can be informed and inform those around him or her, directly accessing the pages of one or more projects. The overall picture is finally offered also to the last links of the chain, still keeping them committed with their micro/macro activities, and not only to those who follow the project from above with a function of coordination. The roles are still the same, but in a way they are levelled and everybody can physically or emotionally participate in other people’s activities, creating a big, common project.

Let us go now into the subject of email. While with the old view it would have been necessary to create a thread of mails between groups of people – consequently excluding others and giving up the idea of sharing – now all comments can be expressed directly within the wiki. They may well even come from departments that are not directly involved or made reference to, but that can still give a value added with their expertise or act as if they were the consumers.

In this way, a project will take shape, maybe going out of the initial limits we had set, to become something better that we hadn’t considered in these new terms. This will be possible and real only when companies decide not to build walls, but rather they will believe in the model of sharing and achievement of a common objective, as TamTamy has done with its wiki and the other tools offered with its service.

The preference given to the use of wikis instead of email, moreover, will also make project management easier for all sectors. The problem of a never received mail, of a too heavy attachment, of the one gone lost in the chaos of hundreds – or thousands – emails received, will no longer exist, or at least it will be mostly limited.

Email is still a useful and indispensable tool, but not always irreplaceable.

When we open our email box in the morning at work, what often happens is that we are literally overwhelmed by emails of any kind.
Leaving out the problem of spam, which can be easily eliminated with filters or accounts which directly deal with it, many other emails still fill our mailbox and we don’t know how to respond to them.
How can we solve the problem?
There are just some simple rules to follow:

1. Make order. What I suggest as first thing to do is putting everything in order from the beginning. If the problem is out of control, take some time to reorganize the emails you have already read, those pending, those you still have to read, and label as much as possible, organizing every single entry in the best way.

2. Archive. Create groups for customers, partners, internal mails or projects, but try to follow a clear structure which you can replicate also in your mind, so that you know exactly what is under control and what is not. Archive everything that has been concluded. Do not wait for a whole project to be closed before eliminating every single email: go on step by step and archive them little by little, without leaving them in the “Income” folder. In this way, also the management of your projects will be clearer and you will feel relieved from the very moment in which you see the volume of your mailbox decrease.

3. Train. The organization of your mailbox is only a part of the problem; what you must absolutely do to avoid getting crazy everyday again is training your interlocutors to be concise and summarize as much as possible in one only mail.
Instead of wasting time in neverending, useless exchanges of emails, use quicker methods of communication, such as instant messaging, conference calls, telephone. Use emails only to send a report to everybody and fix what has been said.

4. Give the example. Of course, the first effort must be yours. Avoid sending emails at all times, to your partners, employees or collaborators. You risk being oppressive, both towards those who are interested in your business and with the ones who are involved directly. A worker who is continually bombarded with emails cannot concentrate on what should be his priority. Remember that spam is not only what comes from undesired sources: bombarding for petty reasons is considered spam as well.

5. Separate. Avoid using the same account for work and for extras such as for example the subscription to social networks, campaigns, trials of new services. Completely separate the two worlds so that you will have very few distractions and will not concentrate everything in a single place, which would easily become clogged.