Has your day ever started like this?
“You have 453 unread emails.”
Mine did. Every single day for about two whole years. At my last job, emails would show up in the morning, all through the day, late into the evening when I was home with my family, and even at night while I slept.
When you work in a cross-functional role, you’re part of a lot of projects. Projects that require communication and that generally happens over email.
Okay, sure, email is technically a form of communication — when it works. Email lets you send a text or photo message to any number of recipients. Sounds awesome, right? And it is. At first.
But when you’re receiving hundreds of emails on a daily basis the awesomeness fades pretty quickly. How do you know which emails to open? What if an important email gets sent to spam? What happens when multiple people respond? Who’s saying what again?
As a system of communication email, frankly, kinda sucks. So what’s the solution? I’ve got three words for you: Enterprise Social Network. Now I can hear you saying, “What the whaaaa?” and I understand your confusion and will overlook your bad grammar.
An ESN is essentially a private social network for work. And although not everyone uses Facebook (his name is “Steve” fyi), I think most of us understand the basic idea of a social network by now.
When people send files, photos or videos, they don’t do it by email anymore. Why not? Because email can be a pain: What’s that one guy’s email again? Did I leave anyone off? Will this just end up in their spam folder? What if it chokes the server?
Like most people nowadays, I send most stuff around on my social network because I want to make sure the people I want to see my stuff can see it and easily comment on it — WITHOUT overloading my inbox with a four-hundred email message thread.
That’s the same thing collaboration software does for me at work. Now, when I’m working on a project, I can post files and documents, add relevant team members, and collaborate in one place. I can set a daily goal and have my team add updates as they complete tasks. I can share that project when it’s completed or when it hits a roadblock with my superiors. I can even pull all of my relevant apps in like Box, SalesForce.com and WebEx to work more efficiently — all without a single email.
The end result? I spend less time managing my inbox and more time getting work done. And the last time I checked, THAT’S what I’m being paid for. Of course, if my boss sent me an email saying I’m getting paid for something else, I probably didn’t get it.
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