Email vs. Collaboration
Sunday: July 29, 2007 6:18 PM
I got an email last week from another person deploying collaborative technology. The nice young lady wanted to know what to say to their manager who thinks collaboration is the same thing as email. Well now…
First, email is a one-to-one communication medium. Even if you include several people in the email then it’s still a one-to-few communication medium. Collaboration is a many-to-many communication medium that creates interaction while email is more about instruction. Collaboration builds transparency and trust while email is really more about building walls around the organization.
Second, email costs the company a lot of money. Think about sending a 1mb file to ten people. These ten people will save a copy on the shared drive and in turn email it to their direct reports who in turn do the same thing. Did I mention the versioning that will happen while the communication passes through the organization? Collaboration may create three versions while email may create 10-20 versions. The Oxford Dictionary contains 66 million words (350Mb), The average employee emails that in a single month. In addition, each month, we email the information equivalent of a Barnes and Noble book store.
Finally, email is really about communication while Enterprise 2.0 is about collaboration. There is a fundamental difference between the art of communication and collaborating. Is this a semantic difference? Michael Sampson put it this way:
My take on the above is that the first two--communication and coordination--have a set of distinct actions that people do when they're communicating or coordinating, but that "collaboration" describes a process that is made up of actions that the word itself does not convey. Or to put it more bluntly, collaboration is merely a meta-word to describe a set of communication and coordination activities with a specific goal or outcome in mind. As in, "collaboration" means communicating with others over time toward a jointly held final outcome, and coordinating the actions of many toward that outcome.
Collaborative tools weaken hierarchies by ensuing the message is untouched and widely distributed. Email is commonly used as a form of escalation up a management chain to cover our backs and ensure the sender is protected. Collaborative tools ensure the original conversation stays intact without management manipulation. Executives want honest and open feedback but rarely get it due to the CYA mentality of the management layer. In the coming years, collaboration will become the number one form of communication in the enterprise.
First, email is a one-to-one communication medium. Even if you include several people in the email then it’s still a one-to-few communication medium. Collaboration is a many-to-many communication medium that creates interaction while email is more about instruction. Collaboration builds transparency and trust while email is really more about building walls around the organization.
Second, email costs the company a lot of money. Think about sending a 1mb file to ten people. These ten people will save a copy on the shared drive and in turn email it to their direct reports who in turn do the same thing. Did I mention the versioning that will happen while the communication passes through the organization? Collaboration may create three versions while email may create 10-20 versions. The Oxford Dictionary contains 66 million words (350Mb), The average employee emails that in a single month. In addition, each month, we email the information equivalent of a Barnes and Noble book store.
Finally, email is really about communication while Enterprise 2.0 is about collaboration. There is a fundamental difference between the art of communication and collaborating. Is this a semantic difference? Michael Sampson put it this way:
My take on the above is that the first two--communication and coordination--have a set of distinct actions that people do when they're communicating or coordinating, but that "collaboration" describes a process that is made up of actions that the word itself does not convey. Or to put it more bluntly, collaboration is merely a meta-word to describe a set of communication and coordination activities with a specific goal or outcome in mind. As in, "collaboration" means communicating with others over time toward a jointly held final outcome, and coordinating the actions of many toward that outcome.Collaborative tools weaken hierarchies by ensuing the message is untouched and widely distributed. Email is commonly used as a form of escalation up a management chain to cover our backs and ensure the sender is protected. Collaborative tools ensure the original conversation stays intact without management manipulation. Executives want honest and open feedback but rarely get it due to the CYA mentality of the management layer. In the coming years, collaboration will become the number one form of communication in the enterprise.
