And here we go again! This week (part 3) I would like to suggest you quit e-mail when e-mail is not best suited for what you are trying to communicate and use the most suitable tool!

Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at

Blinded by the ease and speed of e-mail, among other factors, we tend to forget that e-mail is not the only tool for communicating. This is a list of some of the tools that can largely benefit us when used appropriately in conjunction with e-mail. What do you think these tools are ideal for and not so ideal for? Use this opportunity to jot down your answers and then compare with the answers below:

While there is not one answer, and no right or wrong answer, when it comes to how best to utilize these tools, here are some suggested answers as a starting point:

Let us add a few more asynchronous tools to the mix

• Blogs
• Wikis
• SharePoint
• Google Docs 

Blogs, wikis, Microsoft SharePoint, Google Docs, and other information and document sharing tools, can tremendously help take the load off of e-mail. One of the examples that I give in our workshops relate to how blogs for instance (in this case, we are referring to internal blogs) can help the knowledge experts within the team or organization answer important questions once instead of time after time, and make these answers accessible to everyone within the team or organization. E-mail is not the best way to leverage and share knowledge.

Let us start using e-mail for what e-mail is best at! Before you write your next e-mail, stop for a second and ask the question: Should this be an e-mail or not?

Additional Resources

• MG Siegler from TechCrunch quits e-mail for a month! I will show you how you can quit e-mail too (part 1) and part 2.

• The Accomplishing More With Less Workbook

• The Inbox Freedom Workshop

Founder and principal of People-OntheGo, has more than fifteen years of experience in the software industry. Pierre has founded several companies including a financial software company in 1987 (Computer Trends, Inc.), an e-CRM company in 1995 (Imparto Software Corporation), raised several multi-million dollar funding rounds, and completed two successful acquisitions. In the last few years, Pierre's interest centered around bridging the gap between technology and people. He founded People-OntheGo to help corporate users manage e-mail and digital communication tools more effectively, and Digital-OntheGo to help organizations take full advantage of the new advances in digital video and web distribution, both part of the OntheGo Technologies L.L.C. Pierre holds a Master's degree in Engineering from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and has completed several Executive Education programs at the Stanford Graduate School of Management (Stanford, California).

Pierre Khawand

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