ABC of CC / BCC

I am talking about mid 80s when communication and IT was at its infancy stage. The day in office used to begin with paper emails from various user departments. The daily ritual was a cup of coffee and clearing paper mails and planning the tasks for the day and rest of the day goes as per plan.  If you were really needed to respond, you would write or type a mail and send the same by next internal courier, even when it is to be delivered on next floor or room.

     The emerging technologies have made all of us to work like fire fighter.  You end up receiving hundreds of emails in a day and get tempted to clear all of them as a result even when you switch on your computer in the middle of the night; there is someone who has just fired an email and expecting your response in real-time.  A critical mail changes your priorities and all tasks on hand become less important and in some occasions left halfway as your focus changes to more noisy email sender. Had it been in older days, that mail would have reached you on predefined time and had not impacted your planned activities.

     In older (Golden) days, would you write a mail to an individual and mark a CC to 140 people !!!??.  The answer from even a new generation individual would be “Absolutely No”. Then why are we doing it now. Is it because email does not cost? Or we want to keep people updated (that we are working)?  Why can’t we eliminate the people who are really not needed on CC list?  Most people included on CC or BCC are seniors, who have higher responsibilities and priorities then reading your FYI kind of mails. It is quite evident that most people who receive high number of emails work extra hours and we hear them saying, I have a lot of emails to clear. Both of our hands (eight fingers and one thumb) are stuck to the keyboard during the day. When logged off from the computer the other thumb gets into action on Blackberry J.  We all have become 24x7 postman. Receive mail, sort them into folders and forward some. Depending upon individual’s position in the organization he gets the volume of the emails and relevance.  It is experienced that over 90% of the mails are not addressed to you directly. Either you are on CC where it is for your information and no action is desired or that mail is sent to a larger group (alias) where you are a party or someone who has habit of always hitting REPLY-ALL button.

     The crux of this note is to highlight that, as a sender, treat email as snail mail and send the communication to only those who are really needed. As a recipient download emails at predefined time and respond within reasonable time. This all is needed for better self organization, productivity and cutting down the cost by saving time.

Comments

[Atul Kurani]

Well said.

[Ajit Kulkarni]

Nice title for this article and very close to subject that is close to all of us.

While it may be challenging at times to treat email as snail mail with changing times, technology, and expectations; keeping it limited to the "right" audience is a MUST so that we all can get some work done outside managing the emails.

A lot has been written about emails managing people. Following link gives some easy steps on how to cure what the author calls “email addiction”. Since this is related to the topic of emails, I thought the readers would find the article Email Addicts: Theres Hope yet:

[Sanjeev Samala]

Along with Emails, there is a lot of attension towards SMS and mobile communications..

We are aheading towards Communication "phobia" can't leave without checking emails or SMS...interesting to know, what will be the science in coming years !!

[Veena Deshpande]

Absolutely agree!

[Punit Ganshani]

Very nicely written blog!

I think this phobia stems at every level inside an organization. From junior folks to the seniors, all are so much pressed behind the regular F9 (or automatic send/receive in Outlook) that even during tea-time, we tend to recollect issues that we need to respond to.

[HP]

This was a pretty good post!
Thanks!

Cheers,
HP

[Mihir Gala]

I absolutely agree with the over-whelming time a employee spends on checking e-mails, most of which are not important for him/her. Forwarding e-mails to only the concerned person/s is definitely a habit we all must cultivate.

[Munna Aravinda Babu]

Very good blog.

Though it is simple thing to know, it is very important that every one should know.

I think people should also know to prioritize their mails. Then they can respond to the mails that are of high importance without wasting the time on responding for the mails that are of least preference.

[Shrinivas S Karandikar]

Yes I agree to all of this, in fact each and every bit of it. The communication facilitoes have given us a lot of liking or bias towards it. Imagine the day without an email! How does it feel? However I feel it should be moderatively use, remeber everything in limit is a blessing

I have a suggestion - can we have an email free day at least once a month? difficult to even think of it right?

So be matured, be moderate, be accomodative and very importantly be wise time user while checking emails!

[Shrinivas S Karandikar]

The emails are the most vital in any business now a days. I feel that we must include even email alerts in all our day to day activities
Going forward we should make optimum and effective use of this best communication channels and thus empowering the real life scenarios and not jsu use orkut, facebook for fun!
Imagine a day without an email at all!
so lets set the goal and achieve it

[Rajesh Rupani]

In its White-Collar Productivity Index (WPI), a five-year study of more than 1,000 users, IBT-USA found that e-mail is not as effective as a productivity tool as it's cracked up to be. The WPI shows that the time spent handling e-mail has skyrocketed, from about four hours per week to 8.8 hours per week during the study period. And time spent handling paper mail has not dropped proportionally--it decreased from two hours per week in 2000 to 1.3 hours in 2004.

But the downturn in productivity is not just an IT problem; time spent attending ineffective meetings has risen from 0.7 hours per week in 2000 to 2.1 hours per week in 2004.

This is a serious problem--you'd better send me e-mail about it so we can set up a meeting.

-- Source Netwok Computing

[Shrinivas karandikar]

As mentioned by IBMs and Microsofts it is vital for people to stay connected. In doing so it might have a turnaround time and investment.
All the statistical data is really appreciable but as long as anyone uses EFFECTIVE WAY OF SPENDING TIME IN HANDLING ALL THESE COMMUNICATIONS is the key.

The real idea is to have a person connected and thats why now a days you see Black berrys and WML and Blue tooth, i-Phones technologies coming up

So the mature and sensible person will spend the Optimum time and stay connected and evetually it all depends on an individual as to how to make use of all these technologies. That is the human factor associated really and will always be there come what may be the technology paving the way to success !