Email Is Not A Collaboration Tool
July 26th, 2010 by Mark Lasser
Ending Project Management By Reply-All
In the beginning, we communicated with each other through grunts. Life was OK. Eventually we developed language and life was better. Then the written word, the printing press, and the telephone evolved and life was better still. In our lifetime, some smart people invented e-mail so we could respond when it was convenient and life was great… until someone developed a feature called Reply All.
My favorite Reply All story occurred when I was with Hewlett Packard. Every once in awhile the HR department would send a note to the general list for the Colorado part of the company and some busy cubical dweller would hit reply all to tell the 10,000 people she had some problem and couldn’t be at the meeting on Thursday. To which another dozen people hit reply all to tell her not to reply all. Which resulted in a few hundred more people replying to all that replying to all to not reply to all is idiotic and at some level post-modern. Usually at this point HR sent another note out telling the employees that continuing to reply all would result in a write up since it was causing problems with the mail server.
Incredibly, Reply All has become the de facto system by which companies collaborate on projects. Why would we use such a clunky, outmoded, gaff prone system for mission critical work and revenue generating project communications? I’d have to say first it’s an easy way out. Everyone already has Reply All on his or her computer. But it’s even more the result of not being aware of better alternatives.
So here we are in 2010 an Market7 offers a better way to collaborate and communicate on projects. By being web based anyone can be offered access to the projects without installing any software. It’s easy to use, easy to set up and designed specifically for improved communications and efficiency. If you’re already using it, you know life is now better. If you’re thinking about it, sign-up free at www.market7.com/free and allow your life to get better too.
