I wonder what preparation there has been for the teams that will work in this new space?  I wonder what space they are coming from, and, how that has created unspoken rules about how the company works.  I wonder what the transition will be like.  Creating a play space sounds like a gimmick, and it would be if the company hasn’t prepared.  The question is, will people know instinctively how to use this type of space to do their best work?  I’d be really interested to find out how this works out for them.

“I think email just sucks up time,” Janet Napolitano told an incredulous group of reporters on Tuesday, speaking at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

“In many respects, in a job like mine, it’s inefficient,” Napolitano said, noting that she is briefed by staff frequently and prefers to use the phone for much of her work. “I stopped using email when I was attorney general of Arizona. I was like, ‘Why am I spending my time scrolling through this?’”

This is definitely an extreme case with someone in a job that has high pressure and stress associated to it.  I’m guessing the people around Miss Napolitano have had the stress of her emails dumped on them and are having to pick up the emails she has given up on and translate them into spoken words for her.

It’s becoming more and more fashionable to quit email and I see many who wear the badge with pride.  But, to quit, to give up and to blame email, like it’s this living beast that has come into your world to purposely make it harder seems strange and in my opinion is missing the point.

When I need shelves putting up, it normally means drilling some holes.  I’m not so good at DIY, especially drilling holes.  But, I don’t blame the drill.  I get someone who is good at it, and they use their experience and do a good job.  I don’t need to drill holes everyday, but, like most people who work, I do need to manage inputs like email, it is part of my work.  It’s why people and organisations need to make sure they are amazing at using the appropriate tools for their role. I find it frustrating when I see people giving up on a tool that is actually pretty good when used properly, because they haven’t gone beyond blaming some binary numbers and code in working out why it’s an issue.

If email sucks up time, it’s far to simple to blame email in general.  It’s pretty obvious to me that giving up on email is only ever going to be a sticky plaster over some more deeper rooted issues either in an organisation or an individual.

Instead of being an efficient communication tool, enabling them to work faster – email has become this overloaded traffic jam. Too many emails, coupled with the belief that they must responded to immediately, has created source of frustration, stress and can actually be an obstacle to getting stuff done. And people at Channel 4 were hungry for solutions.

We don’t really do talks though, we like to DO something. So instead of just a talk (OK we do like to tell a few stories sometimes) People Who Do recruited volunteers at Channel 4 and embarked upon some practical experimenting. Actions would be tested; from the implementation of an Email Manifesto, to using alternative channels, and tracking the purpose of individual emails in order to understand what email does for us (following the lead of Luis Suarez).

Here is what we found out…..

No one uses post anymore.
Our email manifesto was very popular.
Picking up the phone or going to see someone has unexpected positive outcomes.
People at Channel 4 are very busy.

To find out how the recruits at Channel 4 were getting on, we experimented with communicating by NOT using email. We tried twitter, we tried calling, both to some success.

We also tried contacting them all by postcard. With no success whatsoever.

We sent 66 postcards. No one got them. At first we thought perhaps they had been mistaken as marketing nonsense. So we tried envelopes, handwritten ones. Because everyone opens a handwritten envelope, right?

N0…Only one got to its recipient. And that was only because a twitter conversation had them hunt down the damn thing, discovering in the process that he did still have a pigeon hole…..who knew?

We managed to get through to about two thirds via phone or twitter, but in the end we had to resort to email. It IS currently the main way to communicate in this media business. Perhaps it is for ALL businesses these days?

When we did get through. Here is what we found. Most people had implemented Manifesto items. And this sparked conversations and education around better use of email. Simple ideas such as, lets agree to keep it short, not to proliferate, reduce it as much as possible.

People tried talking to each other. More short meetings were had, more phone calls, more walking to the desks. Things got agreed faster.

Folk at Channel 4 are very busy. It was just before Christmas, those who signed up to do the tracking experiment, truly did mean to get involved, but you know how it is….. we got one form back tracking the usage. It was sent by twitter. I do kind of like that.

Four people started using twitter as a means to communicate at work. For one who tried it , it didn’t work as not enough of his team were using it, but for some it did; a general question can be raised to group responses. But this is a long way from usefully reducing the email burden.

It appears that at Channel 4 email is overloading the workforce. It has become so dominant that other ways of communicating no longer function. Meetings are frequently too long, poorly focused and lack useful outcomes, yet many find attendance mandatory just in case they hear something relevant. People have stopped answering their phones because they distract from the email workflow and are more often just cold callers selling things. Internal post has attrophied to the point of irrelevance for people.
(To get a commiserations card to one of our workshop participants we got one of the brilliantly friendly and pragmatic reception team to hand deliver it at their recommendation.)

Our work at Channel 4 has helped several teams take more control over their inboxes but the wider email problem and the associated behavioural patterns are so embedded it will take a co-ordinated and sustained effort to fix (as our experiments have shown).

It appears as if the knowledge of how to use alternatives to email has been lost. Digital flow and collaboration tools, social media and even old school technologies like meetings are poorly understood and are not as successful as they could be.

Fixing it is not rocket science, but it does take will power and a recognition that this unplanned surrender to email is the cause of much frustration, anxiety and unhappiness. Not only that, email drowning can severely inhibit creativity. And that can’t be allowed to happen.

On a final note, I would like to flag up an encounter and approach to email that was interesting and perhaps symbolic. John Telford, who works at Channel 4, was one of the first people in the whole country to use email, back in the late 80’s. He an “early adopter” and fascinated by data architecture and new technologies. But travel forward in time and now John hardly uses email. In fact he avoids it if he can. Like Luis Suarez he uses other ways of communicating – John’s preferred method? “I talk to people” He says. “I love it”.

Read our email manifesto here
Read about experiments at Channel 4 here

Storythings Manifesto – first pass

Let’s tell stories. Let’s tell stories that captivate imaginations. Let’s tell stories in all sorts of places, in all sorts of ways, to all sorts of people. Let’s be curious, asking the right questions.  Let’s work in creative spaces and  make amazing things with interesting people. Let’s celebrate our craftsmanship. Let’s keep everything simple, straightforward and be honest with ourselves and others. Let’s only do work we love, and let it make us happy and proud. Let’s get the basics right and do a good job. Let’s be hungry to learn by doing, always, no matter what stage we think we are at. Let’s make sure those that leave us, leave us better than they came. Let’s make friends wherever we can. Let’s get slightly drunk at least once a month. Let’s make it easy for people to work with us no matter where they live, how they live or with whom they live. Let’s be nice and try hard to do the right thing. Let’s give something back whenever we can. Let’s blaze a trail you can see from the moon. Let’s be worth it.

 …and so did they. Now the ball is in their court as they make the manifesto their own.

It was a pleasure to watch them form a family around Matt’s invitation to join him. Favourite quote from the day:

“I keep turning down good paid work. Just in case. So I’m free if something comes up for Storythings.”

There’s something very right going on there.

We did some prep work, posting ideas and inspiration to a basecamp project in the weeks leading up, but we left the bringing together to the day itself.

It was so cold.

We spilled all our ideas out, taking in turns to explain the ones we felt most strongly about and giving examples from our lives about stuff we had done, or wished we had done. That was a lot of fun.

Then we spent some time writing up our favourite things on to cards before organising, sorting and whittling them down. Once we had a list, one of us sat down to give the list some shape, after a few rewrites we had the text and moved to the print works to lay it all out.

It was so cold.

We spent several happy hours finding and setting out the lead type before running off our test copies, only for disaster to strike. We used the wrong frame for the machine and as the roller came over we wiped out most of the letter blocks. Moving to another machine we got some just-readable copies off. It didn’t matter though, the day was still a success. Emily went back a few weeks later and reset the text and made some decent copies.

It was a good day, in hindsight though, I wish we had split the thinking and doing. If we had slept on the text I think we might have added some stuff about collaborating and seeking out like minded people.

It’s not bad though, and there was a lot of satisfaction in thinking it and making it in a day.

Even though it was so cold.

Here is our manifesto for now, until it feels out of date, which could be tomorrow:

Draft print of the manifesto

Do the stuff you love.

Help people do the stuff they love.

Give of yourself: do the right thing even when it’s inconvenient. Always listen, ask questions, try to understand, then stop and think: adapt to what you found. Design and make stuff, make it useful, make it look good. Think the best of people. Be proud of what you do.

Be yourself, don’t pretend.

Seize the scary stuff. Give yourself adventures: do something different. Be optimistic. Get excited. Be uncommon. Tell stories. Play.

Know when to walk away.

Andrew uses an example of the public services in Utah responding to the financial crisis by asking workers to switch to a four day week, same hours, fewer days. After the usual glitches associated with any change people soon settled into it. Workers liked it, they got a long weekend every week. Service users soon got used to having no access on Fridays and found the longer opening hours on other days useful. The state saved millions. Staff wellbeing increased and carbon emissions went down by 14%.

The article cites numerous other examples of four day weeks having a range of expected and unexpected benefits. He also mentions how the City in London has favoured part time working for years (a banker friend of mine used to work from home two days a week too). Favourite quote from a city worker “You may get 20% less pay but you get 50% more free time,”. Interesting way of looking at it.

Andrew is part of the New Economics Foundation, an interesting think tank that a friend of mine is involved with. They came up with a compelling argument for a three day week in the UK too. That’s work looking at.

There was another article a while back about how 37 signals asked their workers to work a short week in the summer so they had more free time in the better months of the year.

be-more-productive-shorten-the-workweek

They found their productivity went up: “When there’s less time to work, you waste less time. When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important. Constraining time encourages quality time.”

We have found this to be true at People Who Do. We started working a four day week about three years ago. Principally because I needed and wanted to look after my young children one day a week. To make it fair Curtis reduced his worked week too. We have found we can get about 95% of the work done in four days we might have taken five to do before. Plus we get that day back for other things. I get time with my family, which it turns out is much more challenging, complex and unpredictable than anything work throws at me. Curtis has time to spend supporting Emily with her business or pursuing his creative projects (more on his Friday experiments here).

We’ve decided that anyone who works with us should only work up to four days a week for us. They can use the fifth day for family, or creative projects, or other work. I guess people might start with us the other way round too: doing other things and a bit of us, then more of us and less of those things. But never just us. That other stuff should keep us broad and interested and exposed to other ideas, people and opportunities, which is good for us all.

Via Not The Kinda Cool, from our recent trip to New York while working for Nokia at Social Media Week

One of the first things we are doing is setting up what I have dubbed the war room.  I’m hoping there won’t be too much fighting going on in it.  I’m really excited about having a dedicated space for this project, a home for it.  We will also be renaming Accelerated Productivity, a name none of us has been particularly excited about for a long time.  One of the reasons the name has stuck is that naming things is really hard.  It reminds me of the days spent coming up with names for songs I’d produced, here’s an example from 1996 of why I probably shouldn’t be allowed to come up with names.  Enjoy.

We were initially asked by Product Manager Marc Haefner and his boss, Richard Davidson-Houston, Head of Channel 4 Online, to help a team of 8, ranging from Programme Commissioners, Managing editors, Business Managers and Finance managers. Since then we have worked with over 50 people in a range of departments.

We took them all through our AP workshop, which includes 121 calls to find out where each person is at, a day spent together in a group pulling out everything they have going on their lives, working out what needs to happen with it, and then putting it back neatly, giving thought to it’s purpose. We spent a lot of time on email, as this is a particular issue at Channel 4. The workshop is then followed up with 121 coaching sessions a week and then a month later. This gives everyone the chance to fine tune their new system, ask questions and discuss further support.  The 121 coaching sessions allow time for a much more personalised approach and an opportunity to discuss non work related issues.

By the end of the workshop and coaching sessions most had put a personalised version of the system into practice and a few had continued using tools with some modifications that were most useful for them. Everyone came away with a sense that they had thoroughly reviewed their lives and made changes for the better.

We continue to run these workshops at Channel 4, with 50 people taking part last year and a further 30 taking part in our email experiments.

Personal stories
Jane Honey
I feel so much better now everything is ‘captured’ – and more enabled to make things happen/get things done. My in box is empty and I feel like my workload is more manageable – long may it continue!

James Rutherford
My inbox is sooooo much better, the tabbed notepad with context and projects etc I’m using less well. Also if a critical thing comes up I’m not moving my pre-planned tasks so now have a backlog but I will prevail!

Helen otter
Workshop was great – really useful and I felt a sense of relief from having ‘got things done’. I particularly liked the way home life was incorporated into the workshop too. This isn’t usually done yet it makes sense and was really helpful. I think I’m more focused and working more effectively. I also feel more in control and that my work and home ‘systems’ are working really well. Overall, I thought it was great. Facilitators easy to speak with and explained everything really well. A good mix between the theory and the practical. All good from my point of view – and I LOVED the gorgeous books and stationery. A really nice touch.

Theresa Sunich
I liked the style of the workshop, and what really made it for me was the way it is tailored to each persons’ situation. And it helped me to confidently put some ground rules down to help with constant adding of tasks.

Related story – Email experiments.

At the Smarter Everyday Workshop for Nokia in NYC.

More here.