BOOK SUMMARY 160
Under New
Management
·
Summary written by: Andy Budgell
"At first blush, all of the ideas in
this book will seem odd compared to business as usual, but the truth is that
business isn't usual anymore."
- Under New Management, page 10
David
Burkus is calling for a revolution. Burkus, the author of the wildly successful
book The Myths of Creativity, acknowledges that many of the ideas
in his new tome, Under New Management, may appear to be
counterintuitive, but he wants you to hear him out.
The
tantalizing chapter titles will give you a good indication of the changes
Burkus wants you to make in your organizations: Put customers second, lose the
standard vacation policy, pay people to quit, make salaries transparent, ban
noncompetes, ditch performance appraisals, hire as a team, write the org chart
in pencil, close open offices, take sabbaticals, fire the managers, and
celebrate departures.
While
many of these may seem farfetched if your organization is still running
“business as usual”, give them a chance. As the venerable management thinker
Gary Hamel so aptly reminds us: “If human beings could invent the modern
industrial organization, then they can reinvent it.”
This
summary focuses on something that we all struggle with on a daily basis–winning
the battle against email pollution.
The Golden Egg
Email pollution
"In 2014 over 108 billion email messages were sent
and received every day. Email occupies 23 percent of the average employee's
workday, and that average employee checks his or her email 36 times an
hour."- Under New Management, page 17
It’s a
safe bet to say that we all know the feeling of trying to conquer what often
feels like an insurmountable mountain of email that is our daily Everest. When
was the last time you saw a clean inbox? Can you even remember that far back?
(Kudos to you if yours is empty now!) Thierry Breton, the CEO of Atos Origin,
coined the term email pollution to describe the more than 100 billion emails
sent every single day, the majority of which are business related. “The volume
of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business,” Breton said in an
interview with Burkus. “Managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week reading
and writing emails.” Research has shown that email is not only distracting with
a negative impact on productivity, but it also raises stress levels
considerably!
“Think
about what your inbox is, says the CEO and founder of Evernote, Phil Libin.
“Your email inbox is a list of things that you’re behind on, sorted in the
wrong order. It’s not how you want to work.” Part of the reason we’re unable to
get a grip on email is because, according to Jay Simon, president of Atlassian
(a software development and collaboration tool) email wasn’t intended for the
way we’re using it and wasn’t designed for “meaningful discussion”.
So how
do we do cut down on email pollution and find a more effective tools for
communication in our organizations? Read on…
Gem #1
Outlawing email
"When the company surveyed employees, it found that
the majority of them felt that they couldn't keep up with their emails, that
the time spent trying was time wasted, and that the effort to stay current with
email kept them from dealing with more important tasks."- Under New
Management, page 14-15
Atos’s
employee survey confirmed to Thierry Breton what he already inherently knew:
that email just does not work. So he got rid of it. Outlawing email sounds
pretty drastic, but it’s not. To be clear, Burkus isn’t advocating the outlaw
of communication, which isn’t viable, but rather finding an alternative social
networking tool.
“Unlike
email,” Burkus says of social networking tools, “these communities are totally
transparent, so newcomers can see all of the communication about particular
issues. Like email, conversations are threaded so that newcomers to the
community can see the past history of the discussion. Unlike email, however,
conversations are not digitally pushed to employees’ inboxes, interrupting their
focused work time. Instead, employees can choose to enter the discussion on
their terms.”
He
goes on to write that it “also makes it easier for employees to find needed
experts, share knowledge companywide, and, most importantly, collaborate
better.”
Here
at Actionable Books, email has been a bit of a hot topic as of late, especially
at our recent leadership retreat. As many of you know, Actionable operates
entirely as a virtual business, so there is a lot of text based communication.
While we haven’t moved to an “email-zero” policy, we have implemented Slack for
internal messaging. While none of us would agree that is a perfect solution for
our needs (unlike Atos we don’t yet have the resources yet to tailor a social
networking tool to our unique needs), it has cut down dramatically on time
previously spent responding to emails and I think most of my colleagues would
agree that it has increased productivity.
Still
not convinced on a total email ban? Why not implement a one week ban on email
and see what happens. Or try GEM #2.
Gem #2
Limited access
"Interestingly, other research suggests that
limiting email checks to certain times is just as effective as banning it
completely. A policy of moderation in email use might be enough to bring about
the same decreases in stress and increases in productivity."- Under New
Management, page 20
This
is good news if committing to completely outlawing email makes you nervous or
just isn’t possible for you or your organization right now. You can still flirt
with the idea—and achieve similar results—by limiting access to your access
email to a certain time each day.
A
recent study by the University of British Columbia discovered what happens to
employees when there is a limited-access vs. unlimited-email condition and the
results were startling. “Similar to the no-email study, these researchers’
findings showed that participants reported significantly less stress when they
were working under the limited-email condition than under the unlimited-email
condition.” But the good news doesn’t end there: “When in the limited-email
condition, participants also felt much less distracted and better able to
focus.”
Limiting
access to email is a practice I’ve been intentional about for a while now. I
tend to comb through my emails at the beginning of the day and respond to
anything that requires my immediate attention, and then save the rest for the
end of the day. While there’s certainly still room for improvement on my end (I
do leave my inbox running in the background during working hours, for instance,
which is a no no according to the book) I have found that it’s a big help.
The
idea of outlawing email is only one of many innovative ideas David Burkus
outlines inUnder New Management to disrupt the 21st century
workplace. All of the tools included in the book have the potential to truly
transform your business if you’ll allow them.
To
paraphrase the book’s subtitle, it’s time to upend business as usual.
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