How often have we searched for information buried somewhere in email gradients? Right! Far too often...
This is not only annoying, but can also slow down a smooth project process. In the following article we have summarized how excessive email traffic can slow down our projects and our daily work.
1. Zero overview
Uh... Who does what? It's only a matter of time before email communication becomes confusing, even if only two people are involved. CCs, attachments, signatures, inappropriate subjects... All this doesn't make it any better.
In this information jungle nobody can find important information like responsibilities, priorities or deadlines. If not only 2 people participate in the email traffic, but 5 or 10, we come directly to the next point:
2. Emails as team chat!
Not only one person responds to the sent mail, but several colleagues. The first reaction still refers to one's own mail, the next to nothing. The next but one then relates again to your mail... Some mails consist only of a few words. At the latest now it becomes impossible to keep the overview.
The mailbox explodes. 3, 2, 1…
3. Email attachments vs central file repository
Sending presentations or spreadsheets by e-mail may work if two people are playing the file back and forth. But as soon as there are more people involved in the game, version conflicts quickly occur. Which file is the most recent? In order to avoid this problem, a central data storage is necessary. This ensures that all parties involved are up to date.
Emailflut
Email flood
The average employee spends an estimated 28 percent of his or her time on email management and nearly 20 percent on searching for internal information or colleagues who can help with specific tasks.
McKinsey
4. Stress
If you are greeted by 93 new emails in your mailbox in the morning, the stress level rises immediately. Because in order not to miss any important news of the project, there is nothing left but to read all the news. There is so much else to do. The time is missing later on and leads to more strains.
5. Resignation
Resigning in front of an overfilled inbox and ignoring it is not the solution, but it happens far too often. That is only human.
But the bad feeling of having missed information remains in the back of your mind. This gnaws at motivation and distracts. Productivity drops and mistakes are inevitable.
6. Information does not reach the recipient
Due to the sheer volume of emails, it unfortunately happens that important information passes the recipient by. Either you accidentally sort out an important mail or the sender forgets to set an email address in CC. The more mails are sent and received, the higher the risk that important information will not get where it is needed to advance the project.
7. Burned time
This point was already part of all the problems already mentioned. Because it is so blatant, it must be mentioned again: Emails burn our precious time.
On the one hand, a lot of time is lost when you search the full mailbox for messages that actually affect you as a recipient. On the other hand, it takes forever to search emails for important information.
In addition, incoming emails struggle for our attention. If we are distracted by them, it can take up to 20 minutes for us to concentrate fully on our work again.
Hard to imagine communicating more unproductively in the project.
Conclusion
Of course, communication via email is important and useful. Email is the right choice especially for long messages addressed to ONE person. But it is only one of many tools that can be used for communication in everyday professional life. Chat services such as Slack are much more suitable for short inquiries.
In order to distribute important information, such as project status, responsibilities or details of measures, the email is conceivably unsuitable. Here a central place for cooperation is needed to enable a fast flow of information. A so-called "Single Point of Truth".
With Falcon, we offer the right tool to keep track of even the most complex projects.