[Sigia-l] Usable -> not be used

[Adrian Howard]

On Friday, Sep 19, 2003, at 20:38 Europe/London, Listera wrote:

> The owner of one of Britain's biggest mobile phone chains has banned  
> all
> internal email. The man, who described himself as a slow typer who has  
> yet
> to send an e-mail on his own, apparently was moved by the recent  
> discussion
> on post-it notes on this list. What's with the Brits and technology  
> anyway?
>
> Deluged Telecoms Boss Bans Staff E-Mails
> <http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&ncid=581&e=5&u=/ 
> nm/2003
> 0919/tc_nm/technology_britain_email_dc>

I presume the reference to the recent post-it note discussion was a  
vague attempt at humour ;-)

This, of course, has nothing to do with any anti-technology bias of we  
weird British folk. The boss hasn't banned all e-mail in the company.  
They're still quite happy to talk to customers and suppliers using  
email as was reported elsewhere.

He also didn't ban all internal email. Just turned it into a  
many-to-one/one-to-many environment with a centrally distributed email  
newsletter. As a business decision.

He felt that centralised (e-mail based) communications, phone calls and  
face-to-face meetings are more efficient than dealing with masses of  
internal email. The time saved could then be used emailing/talking with  
customers and suppliers.

Just like some companies ban full web access, non-work related  
applications, private telephone usage, etc. Nothing to  do with  
technology. Everything to do with what he pays his employees to do and  
effective use of their time.

It may be worth noting that the ban is reported here  
<http://www.newbusiness.co.uk/cgi-bin/ 
newsdesk.pl?criteria=article&id=1428> in the past tense - and  
apparently "the ban brought an instant, dramatic and positive effect."

Whether it will be a sensible decision in the long term - who knows.  
I'm finding Wiki's, blogs, RSS, etc. filling many of the communication  
niches that email used to fill for internal communications (not that I  
could survive without email myself :-)

Adrian