Is an email good enough?

[mikester]

doink!

[gassy]

It's an easy excuse.. "I sent you an email..." so, the resposibility is now off of me and on you...I always follow up an important email with a call.

[Halm]

I hear what you are saying. There is a lot of truth in it. To play "devils advocate" for a second, there are a large number of folks in the workplace today that ONLY communicate by email, and it is my experience as an email consultant that the numbers get larger every day.

Now that said, I also think that the sender has some responsibility in knowing who he is emailing. If these are "old schooler's" then the sender should have phoned to follow-up.

Also, keep in mind that the role of FEMA is a co-ordinator, not the first line of defense. There are what, a total of 2,500 employees, total?

[gassy]

I have to admit I have a client who's only contact with me is email, sometimes frantic. Never a call from them, only frantic emails. I do, on occasion, wait until the next day and email them back and explain that if there is ever an emergency, they can call the office or my cell. They never do. Must not be that much of an emergency. They keep using us as a source.

[EdT82SC]

I heard an interview with the FEMA guy responsible for sending that email. This email he sent out was sent every day, and the content of that email part of the daily briefing of the head of FEMA and the head of homeland security. These guys were briefed that mucho bad was going to happen. I would assume they wouldn't read the email themselves, but the briefing should have covered it....

[mikester]

Yeah Ed, I heard the same interview with the Fema guy.

Fema is not a first responder.

If it's an urgent issue - email is not appropriate for more than documentation purposes.

We have tons of folks who use email alone for communcation and think that it is sufficient (Except when people don't read their email the second it enters the inbox).

In my experience over the last decade - the productive folks are doing other things besides reading email. Plus they typically get so much of it they have to put times in their schedules to "clean it up" to make sure they haven't missed anything important.

Email isn't good enough for those reasons (not saying it isn't great though it's just the expectations).

The FEMA dude got me thinking, as did some of the people I supervise where I work. I've read a few other articles were email was brought up in this way "Well I sent an email, what more did you want me to do?"

MAke a damned phone call idiot.

[red-beard]

Mike. You need to work on your spanish. Seriously, dude...

[mikester]

Master of the obvious.

Do you think I need to speak louder maybe?

Yo Quero Taco BELL!

[skipdup]

I think it depends...

I'm never in the office. Most the people I need to contact are never in the office. Trying to communicate via phone usually just won't cut it. Cell is better, but I'm with clients a lot. And, generally voice-mail is not appropriate for a message with any kind of detail. I can play phone-tag for days with people, and never reach them. And, I HATE marathon voice-mails.

But, I am in the Tech industry, so that may contribute to my opinion.

Keeping personal email separate from business email helps me keep stuff manageable. I see co-worker's in boxes FULL of spam, jokes, bills, personal notes, etc etc etc. And they wonder why they can't keep up.

- Skip

[red-beard]

quiero mas aspirinas...