Counterpoint: email vs. collaboration technologies

In an article called The Big Match, Michael Sampson joins the ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of email versus other collaboration tools (I compiled a summary of the discussion about a month ago).

As a counterpoint to my 10-to-1 list of email effectiveness, Michael provides a 10-to-1 list illustrating the effectiveness of wikis as a collaboration tool. The list points to relevant barriers to wiki adoption, such as people being afraid to click 'edit', forgetting passwords or being drowned in RSS feeds. My favourite is:

"5 people will print off the current version of the wiki page and use that as the authoritative version."

I am sure it does happen.

Michael concludes that most of what is wrong with email can be attributed to human behaviour, and that adoption of other collaboration tools will ultimately be struggling with similar behaviours. He asks, "If we conclude that collaborative tools are substantially different from email, what proportion of people's communication and coordination activities would / could / should be shifted to another tool?".

I think a key to effective collaboration lies in the use of the word 'proportion' in the question above. Only in very few settings will a collaboration tool replace email. In most settings, a key to success is to establish how a new collaboration tool should work with email. As it was phrased at the Collaborative Technologies Conference earlier this year, email is the on-ramp and off-ramp to collaborative spaces.

From a simple perspective, email is a communication and co-ordination tool being used for collaboration. Conversely, collaboration initiatives that do not address the communication angle are likely to fail. (Refer to Michael's article for a discussion of the differences between the three c-words, then cross-check with JP Rangaswami's point about the difference between group decision processes and group work using the Five Frogs analogy.)

Sometimes we want to view collaboration as a series of messages and sometimes as a piece of content where all contributions have been aggregated - and have the power to switch between views as appropriate. I predict that tools with such capabilities will evolve allowing individuals to participate in collaboration using their preferred tools, including email.

Tags: collaboration email email project management collaborative workspaces Michael Sampson shared spaces wiki collaboration tools

Comments

[Thomas Purves]

Some excellent points Lars, while I myself sometimes take certain (mischievous?) pleasure in declaring various "old" media like email just plain dead, the reality ( if we want to get picky about it) is of course far more subtle.

Better quality and availability of alternative communication mediums (e.g. so-called "social media" - not that that phrase makes as much sense in the business context) really just provides a greater choice in communication options for users/systems/humans/yourdog/cat etc.

Ideally, new mediums just let users select from the available tools those best suited to the job a hand. Which, in a lot of cases, won't have to be email anymore.

What with the (nearly-alarming) proliferation of social/professional/marketing/media/hobby etc. community sites these days, I have this fear that within a few years 90% of all email (not counting the other 90% which will still be spam) will consist entirely of password reset emails and add-me-to-your-friend/buddy-list confirmation e-mails...

[Michael Sampson]

Thanks for your post Lars. There's much to try and understand.

"As it was phrased at the Collaborative Technologies Conference earlier this year, email is the on-ramp and off-ramp to collaborative spaces."

Email as item type may be ... but some products actually merge the two (eg, Foldera).

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out.

M.