Comments on: The Problem with Knowledge Work Part I: It’s not e-mail

By: Carrie2

Carrie2 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:49:10 +0000

Adding this to my bookmarks. Thank You

By: David Milligan

David Milligan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:35:27 +0000

I guess I agree with most of what’s been said in this thread. I guess,too, that there is a big difference when knowledge workers are employed in a bottom-line company producding a physical product and when they work in an information business. In a business where information itself is the product, there is a constant dialectic (blurring may be a better term) between communication and the technology used to transmit it. In this case, e-mail is not just a message, it is the subject matter of the company. Would that Marshall McLuhan were still with us.
What I have noticed is that there is an expectation that e-mail is as reliable and accountable a way of communication as is real-time talk.
Too often, I’ve seen people send e-mail with the expectation that a matter is now taken care off. And they never had to confront anybody or deal with any emotional content. They then wash their hands of it. There arises an assumption that the recipients are monitoring their mail at all times and will act on it. One of most ironic things you can see nowadays, is someone storming into an office, or picking up a phone, and bellowing: “didn’t you get my e-mail?!?!”

By: Wikinomics » Blog Archive » The Problem with Knowledge Work Part III: Trust (or lack thereof)

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:57:14 +0000

[...] Part I, Part II, Part III Tags: collaboration management productivity trust [...]

By: Weekly blog posts (weekly) « Lelapin’s Weblog

Weekly blog posts (weekly) « Lelapin’s Weblog — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:38:20 +0000

[...] Wikinomics » Blog Archive » The Problem with Knowledge Work Part I: It’s not e-mail [...]

By: George Goodall

George Goodall — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:56:59 +0000

Interesting post Naumi. I think there’s another angle that accounts for the popularity of email: time — time to think, time to craft a response, and time to figure out what one is actually supposed to do. As you point out, collaborative work generates a lot of additional tasks and many of these tasks don’t conform to the tenets of established policies or workflows. They are exceptions. In many ways, knowledge work is about managing these exceptions. And email is a medium that both gives us the necessary time to respond and limits the possible range of responses to reply, reply all, forward, delete, and ignore.

By: Brent

Brent — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:13:15 +0000

I think an analysis of the effect of email on collaboration in organizations needs to take into account the variation in organization. I work in a larger professional services firm that uses email as the basis of its work distribution and much firm-wide as well as inter-team communication. Thus, whereas I get almost no spam or social email, I get a large portion of firm-wide news-type emails. However, the vast majority of the email that I receive is the work itself (instructions, files, etc.) I think it would be interesting to investigate these differences and how they relate to organizational cultures.