Over the last few years, most of us have grown increasingly vigilant in guarding our email accounts against outside intruders--everything from Nigerian princes attempting to quietly move millions of dollars to the U.S. to insider stock tips to...well, you've seen them all. Many of our employers have since invested a lot of money to help protect our email accounts from such intrusions and slow the well-documented drain on personnel productivity.
And yet, the classic philosopher "Pogo," who has been credited with "We have met the enemy, and he is us," had it right way back in 1970. In an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Rebecca Buckman (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119612732031704719.html) reports that our own colleagues may well be our worst spam enemies. She reports that last year the average corporate employee received 126 messages per day--a 55% increase in only three years. What I found most intriguing was the prediction that by 2009, the average worker expects to spend over 40% of his/her time just managing their email acccounts.
Unfortunately, it seems, while we are winning the battle against outside invaders, we are being electronically beaten senseless by our own colleagues. Specific abuse examples cited include indiscriminate use of the proverbial "reply to all" button and mass announcements to all employees for an event of interest/relevance to no more than a few individuals. And if you're a member of a social networking group such as Linked-In or Facebook, you know all too well how many times in a given day your focus can be interrupted with notices and announcements.
Rebecca goes on to document some of the recent technological innovations designed to protect us against even some of our well-intentioned colleagues, and some packages do appear promising. I wonder, though, if what could be just as effective would be to simply invest in some basic training on e-mail etiquette for all of us. I'm going to work harder at "thinking" about which emails are needed and who really needs them before I hit the send button. Maybe a good starting could be to look at the mail you received already today, and then look at how much of it you really needed to do your job effectively, and then resolve not to pass on those same mistakes to others.
Now, let's see...where was that company-wide distribution list so I can send this posting out?...