Monday, November 15, 2010
Corporate culture is defined by the actions of the people who sit in their corner offices. Their habits, communication styles, and patterns of interactivity set the standard for the communication dynamics in the company they head. As a result, email culture can be defined from the top down.
If senior management is online all the time, ambitious employees assume that one of the paths to success in this organization is rapid-fire response to email, anytime day or night. If the boss is using email to communicate urgent information, the employee must check new messages as they come in for fear of missing a hastily-called meeting or a request for immediate action. In the blink of an eye, compulsive email behavior becomes a company-wide norm and soon that entire workforce is mirroring that behavior—becoming e-ddicted.
Defining the email culture is the prerogative of the management team. Business leaders must understand the overall costs of either actively or passively endorsing compulsive or toxic email behavior. By taking responsibility for the e-habilitation of the organization, optimal email practices can be put into place that will increase the profitability of the business, give the company an edge over the competition, and enable greater work-life balance for the work force.
To successfully conquer company-wide email e-ddiction and subsequently increase productivity, the transformation process must start at the top. Executives and other formal or informal leaders must choose to make better email management a reality for their organization, and therefore cut the costs of being constantly connected and e-ddicted to toxic email practices.
Curing this e-ddiction takes leadership. It won't happen with a simple memo. Influential people will need to change ingrained habits of email misuse. From the CEO to the informal group leaders, it is up to everyone to spearhead the cure and set the standard for savvy email practices among employees.
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