You say these things happen, but don't example how or why. Fortune 500 businesses use email.
Fortune 500 companies also use other forms of comms (collaboration platforms, SMS, Slack, WhatsApp and so on). All governed by policies, performance agreements, etc. where there's expectations that people communicate effectively whether in person or digitally.
I work in very large organization - way larger than the average Fortune 500 company - and deal with several dozen to a hundred emails of per day - has been the case for going on 25 years. I know email not going away - it's time consuming but not frustrating like band email comms are. Sure, I hate it when someone sends a 10MB attachment to thousands of of people via email thereby crashing the email servers but whatever. So, when I start a new work project, I create the collaboration space and set up a dedicated comms channel to keep the critical stuff off email. It's easy to miss things with the amount of email traffic we all get - signal to noise ratio. I try to maximize the signal. The one good thing about our email solution (Outlook) is the calendar. That's my lifesaver.
So you asked for an example of email nonsense....below is a summary of recent email transactions with my band mates - all of whom are mature IT professionals (programmers, administrators, architects, etc. ). I'm the odd man out, I'm just an R&D scientist. So, hardly tech dullards and are generally good communicators. In a band email context - not so much!
Over the last couple of weeks, this occurred over email between the five of us:
- Gig alert comes in through one member, only one other band member was notified
- The originator thought he was emailing everyone but was in fact sending this information in a response to another email chain between himself and one other member (frontman).
- In the meantime, another convo starts with all of us (about next rehearsal)
- At some point, someone appends the gig alert message to rehearsal planning message. The two threads are now one.
- Drummer comments that it seems there's two conversations going on, so he starts another email thread about the gig details - will there be drums supplied; two more of us jump on board that thread.
- But in one of the previous email (deep down in the now combined emails), the frontman had said he wasn't available for the gig.
- No one acknowledged that particular fact.
- Second thread about rehearsal continues with a comment about getting a setlist together for the gig that the frontman is not available for!
- Then the rehearsal thread is taken over by a discussion about Neil Peart's death. That conversation goes on for a couple of days.
- All this on top of an email discussion of a recent recording mix I circulated for comment.
Current status: rehearsal date not confirmed and gig participation not confirmed. All this mixed in my email inbox with emails offers from
Musicians Friend, my insurance company, my dentists office, my city councillor, my kid's school and on and on and on. And the recording mix needs more cowbell!
Here we are now today and at least one of us is under the impression than the gig is going forward this Friday and we don't have a rehearsal date nailed down. We're likely going to rehearse this week and we won't do the gig since the frontman is not available. I'm loathe to start another email chain sorting all of this out. I'm not the BL so I'll let the dust settle and wait for a rehearsal day confirmation. Of course, it might be days before any one person will respond to what seems like an urgent issue - gig this Friday or not? Oy vey. I'll just spend my time mixing in a little more cowbell on our recent recording. This type of thing happens more often than not, in this particular group.
I've had similar scenarios with my other band (that uses Slack) - since all the comms are in one place it's not much effort to follow a multi-threaded plot and get a direct response to a particular query. Gig alert - all in - Yay or nay? Available next Thursday for rehearsal - Yay or nay? or identify who has not yet responded in order to coordinate. One word response required - all responses in one place. We were gigging multiple times per month. it was not so easy to track using email when we relied on that. We had one member in that band who was an email dullard but otherwise bright guy (music teacher). He missed gigs, showed up early or not at all. Vague comments and/or responses coming days after being sent. We rehearsed at his place so on rehearsal nights we were always anticipating him not being home! So, we switched to Slack and all those problems disappeared.
My experience, YMMV.
