Are you still communicating via email?
Obviously you are! The electronic letter ranks as one of the greatest inventions, along with Tarmac, the Roman Dodechahedron and the Tablespoon. Emails are liberating, ubiquitous and a basic tool in an ageing toolbox.
If it ain’t broke, then don‘t fix it!
The hail of the generations with connections from the war. But change, the pursuit of change, but never for change’s sake, should be a cornerstone of business thinking especially since the internet revolution of decades ago.
Or, as everyone in business should ask on a regular basis, can we do more with less?
Can we save money and drive turnover?
And time, most definitely is money.
The benefits of electronic mail, over snailmail are obvious. Email should be immediate and easily shared.
But once it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s like putting a letter in a post box......
Who does not reply to all?......
Lost emails? How does this happen?......
Didn’t come through…. come on!
It’s 2024 we communicate via multiple channels. Data has been saved on shared folders for decades, access privileges are set by IT support, you may have mobile access and everything can very easily go down.
Why are you doing this?
Have you never heard of Slack or Clickup? What about Teams, Asana, Discord or Monday? You will have used Zoom....
Who uses chat or a messenger?
Here's a video from two Americans with nice teeth and hair. What I respect about them is that not only do they know what they are talking about, but also they are passionate about tools that help business.
Always remember the three rules of tools:
The 3 Rules of Tools:
Right tool for the right job
A bad worker always blames their tools
There is always another way to skin a cat
Back in the day, being trained by a company who believed they were the best business advisors in the world, I was told;
‘Set the agenda and control the minutes’.
I‘ve always struggled with this political manoeuvring in business matters simply as it felt underhand and manipulative.
Tools such as Slack or ClickUp are now the liberating and ubiquitous tools that will help businesses keep a tight control of costs and drive turnover.
The main issues with these solutions is that they concentrate on selling themselves as communication tools and project management systems or use words that make them sound like they are only suitable for tech companies or marketeers.
If you have a leadership team, with weekly meetings, you need one of these solutions. If you have any form of regular meeting, you need one of these tools. If you are not having regular meetings, this is fundamental and should be implemented now.
So let’s get down to the basics:
- They can make your senior management, your leadership efficient.
- They streamline your business into channels to give access to all areas of your business at every level of your people.
- Business information is available to all who need it, whenever they need it, fostering better decision making.
- They are massively cheaper than an extensive IT infrastructure.
- They are built to be used on the move, in the office, with clients or at home.
Why do you want to control the flow of information? It’s not conducive to productive teamwork, fosters a blame culture and is inefficient.
Control freaks beware!
They offer unrivalled access in both top down and bottom up business management. What that means is that via their channel infrastructure you can see whatever is happening in your business whenever you want. Try and do that with your email infrastructure.
They work as file servers.
They work as chat.
You can broadcast internally.
You can create secure, access restricted channels.
They work seamlessly on mobile phones.
They work with external suppliers.
They work with customers.
Your IT people may not like it… their empires shrink!
And best of all, they work with emails.
