I've been thinking a lot about email lately. I'm convinced, that after the personal computer, there have been few technical innovations that have so rapidly been adopted and have so radically changed the work environment. While the World Wide Web really caused the Internet to explode in growth, email delivered the Internet into every office with a real business purpose. So let's look at my personal timeline for a minute...
1988: Pat gets his first computer at work. It is a word processor for letters, forms, and academic papers.
ca. 1991: Pat discovers a 1200 baud modem and places where you can download software over dialup connections.
1992: Pat goes to work at Household International and is introduced to PROFS. email becomes part of everyday life, but it is only within the company and does not integrate calendaring.
1993: Pat discovers Chicago Online, part of the then-fledgling America Online. The service very quickly allows email to be sent to other services like Compuserve and GEnie.
1994: Corporate email finds the Internet.
1995: The Internet takes off.
So as I sit here today, email has been a part of my business life for just over 15 years. I would estimate that the transition from paper-based mail to email began in earnest about 1995. By 1997, email had effectively killed off paper-based mail and internal memoranda (at least in my life). So we have just over 10 years of hardcore, business to business communications via email. But that transition happened so quickly. While some folks had email prior to 1990, I would suggest that it moved from occasional tool to everyday workhorse for most companies between 1994 and 1996. That's a radical change in something less than four years, in my estimation. This development is really only eclipsed by the development of the personal computer. Arguably, if you mark the birth of the PC as 1981 (when the IBM PC was released), the PC started to enter mainstream businesses in force in the 1984 to 1986 timeframe. (Yes, the Apple and Tandy computers were around earlier, but they tended to be seen as curiosities.) By 1988, they were becoming ubiquitous in many companies. The next 8 years radically changed the workplace. Then the Internet and email changed it again.
So enough of this history lesson. Why is email on my mind? Well, in the past month, I've had two opportunities to speak about email management. Email management is very much top of mind for many records managers. We've had this stuff around for ten years or more and yet very few of us are managing it well. I sit here today with three personal email addresses and one business address. In a given day, my personal email addresses will collect perhaps 30 to 40 actionable emails (exclusive of spam and Listserve posts). I'll delete a lot of those (many are subscriptions or promotions for various things that I've asked for), respond to some, and save for reference others. At work, I see perhaps 15 to 20 emails a day, but that number is growing and the vast majority are business emails that require a response. Now based upon some statistical data, I'm actually somewhat behind the curve. Last month, I was on a panel discussion following a presentation by Michael Osterman of Osterman Research. His company's research indicates that the average employee receives and sends something like 140 email messages a day. I suppose that if I read all those Listserve postings, I might hit those numbers... Nonetheless, that's a lot of correspondence.
And think back to those days of yore... did anyone ever deal with 140 inbound and outbound personal letters a day? For the vast majority of us, I would say absolutely not. Many years ago, at one of my prior employers, the Records Management department received all of the company's paper mail. The Records staff would open all incoming mail that was not strictly "personal and confidential", review the mail, and determine if it should be copied, routed and filed, then send the original to the addressee. Outgoing mail was copied and distributed according to strict rules, but every piece of business correspondence was filed by Records in that manner. Email completely changed that process. In the early days, the same rules were applied to email as paper mail, except the recipients were required to send a paper copy of every email to Records for filing. That lasted less than a year. First the volume became too great, then the users didn't have the time to print and route the email. There were no tools that could manage the volumes effectively and anarchy took hold. We were later able to rein in the email to some extent, but email became a tsunami of records.
If you recall my earlier blog post on typing, I said that "...if everyone is a typist, everyone creates and files records. Welcome to full employment for records managers!" That is never more true than with email. My mother was a traditional secretary. She learned shorthand and typing in high school and would go into her boss' office to take down what he wanted to say in every letter. She would take the dictation, then transcribe the dictation into letters. He would glance at the letter, sign it, she'd make and file a copy, while mailing the original. To our thinking today, that's a terribly inefficient way to do business -- but it also meant that every piece of correspondence had to have good reason to be sent. It also enabled the sender to think about what was going to be sent -- first, while dictating, then, when it came back for signature. Days and weeks might pass between sending a letter and receiving a response. FedEx and the fax machine accelerated that a bit, but email changed the dynamic completely. That means that everyone has become a typist and a file clerk with volumes of correspondence never dreamed of in the past -- and with risks never dreamed of in the past. In the old days, it was pretty hard to accidentally distribute sensitive information to hundreds of people. Today, one keystroke can ruin a career. One email can help to destroy a company:
"Mike -- It might be useful to consider reminding the engagement team of our documentation and retention policy."
That was from Nancy Temple's infamous email in the Arthur Anderson / Enron debacle. The implication, of course (and never substantiated) was that Ms. Temple was providing cover for the Enron team to destroy records. But this is typical of many email messages. The context is not totally clear. The intent is really unknown. The tone is what you hear inside your head when you read it. And it is easy to infer both good and bad intent. As the author, you know what you meant -- but in the haste to get a response out and get on to the next message, you write something that is misinterpreted. And then things get interesting. For every problem solved by email, it seems that another comes along to take its place.
Today, I look at my personal email volumes and know that things are way out of hand. I probably keep too much of it (personally), but that has more to do with inexpensive disk space than anything else. Searches take forever and folder structures just don't cut it. At work, the volumes grow equally fast and we're really wrestling with solutions that meet our retention requirements, while not messing too much with the end users. The other presentation that I participated in this month allowed me to speak to user requirements. at the end of the day, I simply haven't found that holy grail of email management. Automatic classification has some promise, but it won't work for every organization and very often doesn't enable the granularity that is needed. In addition, the proliferation of personal email in the business environment is bordering on insane. With my new employer, I have tried very hard to keep personal email out of my Inbox. But it is very hard to do. And I have run across many people who don't separate business from personal -- their work computer is their only computer. So capture of every inbound email means that a lot of personal email would be saved.
Ten to twenty years of email for some employees also means that most have evolved their own habits (for good or bad) around email management. The far end of that spectrum represents employees who likely recall the old days of paper filing and might have retained some good habits. At the other end of the spectrum are employees fresh from school who have ten years of personal habits -- many of which may never involve use of the Delete key -- or involve overzealous application of the delete key.
The next several years will involve massive change management to get the proper behaviors embedded -- or it will mean that we simply capture everything and try to sort out the spam, garbage and personal email, while retaining what is important. At any rate, it will mean a significant educational effort for just about every employee in every organization -- and that assumes that we can get the genie back in the bottle.
The legal lessons are out there. Most email users have scars from mis-sent email messages or online flame wars. Yet the old habits die hard -- probably simply because the volumes are not going down and employees are pushed to be ever more productive in a global, semi-synchronous world.
It's closing on Midnight here in Chicago. Day has not quite broken in Europe. It is lunchtime in India and mid-afternoon in China. My Motorola Q is buzzing merrily through the evening as I receive messages from around the world. My personal Inboxes are reminding me that something new has arrived in my personal world. And as I write this, I'm periodically responding to personal and business email. As I sleep, those Inboxes will store more email and the cycle will repeat. PDAs and wireless communications allow you to receive and send email from anywhere at any time. That is the promise and the curse of email. It enables a global workforce and business. But it can also sit on your hip 24 hours a day reminding you that the company never sleeps -- and the sun never sets on records management. I guess we better figure this one out.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Show Your Work!
Every now and then, I find myself lapsing into phrases and language that I learned as a child. It freaks me out when I say something that was a hallmark of my father.
The ten your old (whom we have met here before) has her struggles with Math. So from time to time, she comes into my office to have me check her homework. I can tell this is painful for her because she knows that the very first thing I'm going to tell her is, "Show your work!" "But Dad," she protests, "we don't have to do that today!" And that one word, "today", and its inflection says so much. She may as well pack me off in the wheelchair to the Irrelevant Parents' Home.
Nonetheless, what I also perceived as a pain in 1972, and she perceives as a pain in 2008, carries value. When you ask for help, it shows that you have tried an approach and enables the person helping you to see where you went wrong.
So now, to today's homily...
I've been a subscriber to the Records Management Listserve since 1993. Back then, I think the subscriber base was well under 100 and email was a new thing for many people. The original Listserve was put together by records managers for educational institutions (mainly because they were among the few people out there with Internet email at the time). Anyway, over the years I have noticed a mis-use of that forum that bugs me every time I see it. That is, the person who posts something to the effect of, "I've been told to do a [insert a variety of RIM projects]. Could everyone send me a copy of what they have done?" And this can range from university students writing term papers to rookie records managers writing RFPs to experienced records managers looking for forms. I have, on occasion, written to the person committing the etiquette breach and asked them to consider how their post appears to 1500 or 2000 colleagues. My experience is that while some folks will be helpful, these sorts of requests are often met with a very stony silence. When I have written these folks, I sometimes will get a very defensive reply -- and sometimes these folks are hurt that "no one responded -- I don't understand why when you ask for something, there are all sorts of replies". My response to that generally looks like this:
Young Grasshopper,
A long line of stern women in severe black dress once pounded into my thick skull that the path to knowledge is best found when you show the path already taken. In their direct terms, they told me to "SHOW YOUR WORK!" These same teachers also informed me that following the same path as others did not allow you the experience of discovery and the opportunity to blaze new trails. In their terms, "EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPERS!"
Now Grasshopper, in the business world we like to use the term "benchmarking". I have heard you propose to me that what you are doing is simply "benchmarking". And that may be so. I have often used the term myself, but I am very selective in choosing benchmarking partners. The best sort of benchmarking is when all parties share their approaches equally -- and particularly when the person receiving the most value from the process shares his or her findings with all the participants. My teachers would say, "IF YOU BRING A TREAT TO CLASS, MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE ENOUGH TO SHARE WITH THE ENTIRE CLASS."
And so, young Grasshopper, I offer you this advice: When seeking the wisdom of others, demonstrate that you are worthy of that wisdom. Show that you are willing to find your own path and that you have done your own work. Share your bits of knowledge with everyone and when others share with you, ensure that everyone benefits from your learning.
The guru is out.
The ten your old (whom we have met here before) has her struggles with Math. So from time to time, she comes into my office to have me check her homework. I can tell this is painful for her because she knows that the very first thing I'm going to tell her is, "Show your work!" "But Dad," she protests, "we don't have to do that today!" And that one word, "today", and its inflection says so much. She may as well pack me off in the wheelchair to the Irrelevant Parents' Home.
Nonetheless, what I also perceived as a pain in 1972, and she perceives as a pain in 2008, carries value. When you ask for help, it shows that you have tried an approach and enables the person helping you to see where you went wrong.
So now, to today's homily...
I've been a subscriber to the Records Management Listserve since 1993. Back then, I think the subscriber base was well under 100 and email was a new thing for many people. The original Listserve was put together by records managers for educational institutions (mainly because they were among the few people out there with Internet email at the time). Anyway, over the years I have noticed a mis-use of that forum that bugs me every time I see it. That is, the person who posts something to the effect of, "I've been told to do a [insert a variety of RIM projects]. Could everyone send me a copy of what they have done?" And this can range from university students writing term papers to rookie records managers writing RFPs to experienced records managers looking for forms. I have, on occasion, written to the person committing the etiquette breach and asked them to consider how their post appears to 1500 or 2000 colleagues. My experience is that while some folks will be helpful, these sorts of requests are often met with a very stony silence. When I have written these folks, I sometimes will get a very defensive reply -- and sometimes these folks are hurt that "no one responded -- I don't understand why when you ask for something, there are all sorts of replies". My response to that generally looks like this:
Young Grasshopper,
A long line of stern women in severe black dress once pounded into my thick skull that the path to knowledge is best found when you show the path already taken. In their direct terms, they told me to "SHOW YOUR WORK!" These same teachers also informed me that following the same path as others did not allow you the experience of discovery and the opportunity to blaze new trails. In their terms, "EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPERS!"
Now Grasshopper, in the business world we like to use the term "benchmarking". I have heard you propose to me that what you are doing is simply "benchmarking". And that may be so. I have often used the term myself, but I am very selective in choosing benchmarking partners. The best sort of benchmarking is when all parties share their approaches equally -- and particularly when the person receiving the most value from the process shares his or her findings with all the participants. My teachers would say, "IF YOU BRING A TREAT TO CLASS, MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE ENOUGH TO SHARE WITH THE ENTIRE CLASS."
And so, young Grasshopper, I offer you this advice: When seeking the wisdom of others, demonstrate that you are worthy of that wisdom. Show that you are willing to find your own path and that you have done your own work. Share your bits of knowledge with everyone and when others share with you, ensure that everyone benefits from your learning.
The guru is out.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Typing
I never properly learned how to type. Lately, the Shift key and my fingers have been at war. I think changing keyboards at home and work have somehow messed with my modified hunt and peck style of typing.
So why is this worthy of blogging today?
Well, think about it. When I was growing up, typing was something that clerical workers did. In the late 1970's, I was attending a college prep school. They still offered a traditional typing class -- the room full of IBM Selectrics and all that. They also offered a computer programming class. Back in the day, I lived 13 miles from my high school and rode the bus every day. In retrospect, probably a bad idea, but I did get a very good education, even if I didn't do much there outside of school hours. There really were no comparable Catholic college prep high schools nearby at the time, so I was stuck. What that meant was that I was very limited in what I could do before and after school. I played football and belonged to a couple clubs, but any after school activities meant that my grandfather had to drive out there to pick me up.
And this is relevant how? Well, back in the day, my parents had a typewriter. It was some sort of old Smith Corona electric beast. I can remember playing with it as a small child. Problem was, if you took typing, you really needed to use the Selectrics. My mother had one at work, but using her primary tool at work to practice wasn't going to happen. So my other option was practicing after school in the typing room. But that would have meant no after school job and an extra trip for grandpa, plus my Dad wasn't enthused about paying for bus service and not using half of it.
Besides, I was going to college... I was going to have a job where typing wasn't required. Or so we thought...
Geek that I am today, why didn't I take a computer class? Well, same reason. The computer at school in 1978 was a PDP-8, which used Teletype interfaces. No monitors. Just a keyboard, a roll of paper, and a punched tape reader. You type the input, the machine would echo back the characters on paper and store the input. You would then run the program. If it worked, you would then generate a punched tape output of the program so that you could load it again. Problem was, the computer room was not much more than a big broom closet with three Teletype machines. There were a couple more in the science labs, but you had to sign up for time on the machines. Yep, after school. And if you couldn't type efficiently, life was going to be miserable.
So I start college in 1980. First thing out of the box, I need to buy... a typewriter. We lug that old Smith Corona to school and I discover the joys of Wite-Out. That old beast let everyone know when you hit the carriage return. We later bought a Brother CE 50 correcting typewriter (which I still have, although I have no idea if you can get ribbon for the thing). Now this is the height of typewriter technology in the 1980's -- changeable Daisywheel and a lift off correcting ribbon that will remove the entire previous line of type.
So the way that I learned to type was purely hunt and peck. Today, I have a better idea of where the keys are, but since I never properly learned how to type, I still type looking at the keyboard and with only a couple of fingers (I am pretty fast, however). It's just that pesky Shift key these days...
One of my challenges in never learning to type properly was speed. That meant that I had to pretty much get it right the first time. What may have been a draft for many people was a finished product for me. That tends to focus the mind a bit. Somehow, I managed to muddle through. It has been helpful today in thinking through what I write before I put fingers on keyboard.
The computer and word processing software was a huge breakthrough for me. Where I once thought that being able to retype one line of a paper was a big deal, I could now insert new thoughts, rearrange paragraphs, and compose whole new sections. My first computer (a Kaypro IV) became part of my life in about 1986. The rest is history...
Was I going to make a point? Oh yeah. Besides explaining random lapses of capitalization in my posts, I wanted to point out a revolution that many people may not have grasped. While typing was offered to many people in the past, and college-bound students often had to learn to type, that skillset often went away once the person entered the working world and had secretarial staff available to type letters. The limited resources also meant that far fewer written records were created. Today, small children are learning to type. They have to. They all have email accounts. It is a given that every child (at least in my neighborhood) has basic keyboarding skills and is able to use a computer before they leave 8th grade. Looking at high school course lists, typing (as such) is rarely taught today. It is generally bundled with a class on using word processing software and basic computing. What this means is that everyone is a typist. And if everyone is a typist, everyone creates and files records. Welcome to full employment for records managers!
If I had only known then, what I know now...
So why is this worthy of blogging today?
Well, think about it. When I was growing up, typing was something that clerical workers did. In the late 1970's, I was attending a college prep school. They still offered a traditional typing class -- the room full of IBM Selectrics and all that. They also offered a computer programming class. Back in the day, I lived 13 miles from my high school and rode the bus every day. In retrospect, probably a bad idea, but I did get a very good education, even if I didn't do much there outside of school hours. There really were no comparable Catholic college prep high schools nearby at the time, so I was stuck. What that meant was that I was very limited in what I could do before and after school. I played football and belonged to a couple clubs, but any after school activities meant that my grandfather had to drive out there to pick me up.
And this is relevant how? Well, back in the day, my parents had a typewriter. It was some sort of old Smith Corona electric beast. I can remember playing with it as a small child. Problem was, if you took typing, you really needed to use the Selectrics. My mother had one at work, but using her primary tool at work to practice wasn't going to happen. So my other option was practicing after school in the typing room. But that would have meant no after school job and an extra trip for grandpa, plus my Dad wasn't enthused about paying for bus service and not using half of it.
Besides, I was going to college... I was going to have a job where typing wasn't required. Or so we thought...
Geek that I am today, why didn't I take a computer class? Well, same reason. The computer at school in 1978 was a PDP-8, which used Teletype interfaces. No monitors. Just a keyboard, a roll of paper, and a punched tape reader. You type the input, the machine would echo back the characters on paper and store the input. You would then run the program. If it worked, you would then generate a punched tape output of the program so that you could load it again. Problem was, the computer room was not much more than a big broom closet with three Teletype machines. There were a couple more in the science labs, but you had to sign up for time on the machines. Yep, after school. And if you couldn't type efficiently, life was going to be miserable.
So I start college in 1980. First thing out of the box, I need to buy... a typewriter. We lug that old Smith Corona to school and I discover the joys of Wite-Out. That old beast let everyone know when you hit the carriage return. We later bought a Brother CE 50 correcting typewriter (which I still have, although I have no idea if you can get ribbon for the thing). Now this is the height of typewriter technology in the 1980's -- changeable Daisywheel and a lift off correcting ribbon that will remove the entire previous line of type.
So the way that I learned to type was purely hunt and peck. Today, I have a better idea of where the keys are, but since I never properly learned how to type, I still type looking at the keyboard and with only a couple of fingers (I am pretty fast, however). It's just that pesky Shift key these days...
One of my challenges in never learning to type properly was speed. That meant that I had to pretty much get it right the first time. What may have been a draft for many people was a finished product for me. That tends to focus the mind a bit. Somehow, I managed to muddle through. It has been helpful today in thinking through what I write before I put fingers on keyboard.
The computer and word processing software was a huge breakthrough for me. Where I once thought that being able to retype one line of a paper was a big deal, I could now insert new thoughts, rearrange paragraphs, and compose whole new sections. My first computer (a Kaypro IV) became part of my life in about 1986. The rest is history...
Was I going to make a point? Oh yeah. Besides explaining random lapses of capitalization in my posts, I wanted to point out a revolution that many people may not have grasped. While typing was offered to many people in the past, and college-bound students often had to learn to type, that skillset often went away once the person entered the working world and had secretarial staff available to type letters. The limited resources also meant that far fewer written records were created. Today, small children are learning to type. They have to. They all have email accounts. It is a given that every child (at least in my neighborhood) has basic keyboarding skills and is able to use a computer before they leave 8th grade. Looking at high school course lists, typing (as such) is rarely taught today. It is generally bundled with a class on using word processing software and basic computing. What this means is that everyone is a typist. And if everyone is a typist, everyone creates and files records. Welcome to full employment for records managers!
If I had only known then, what I know now...
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Infinity
My ten year old is getting a telescope for Christmas (all this travel yields a fair number of Amex points which converted nicely to a decent telescope). Don't tell her that.
Owning a telescope in a metropolitan area leaves a lot to be desired, I suppose. When I was a Cub Scout, I recall that one of the things that we had to do to get a merit badge was see a satellite in the night sky. I recall all of us laughing at that because we could hardly see the stars! And in ca. 1972, there were no Internet sites that would enable you to schedule a time to see one fly over. There also were a whole lot fewer satellites in general.
When I moved to Quincy, Illinois to attend college, I can still remember going outside one night and looking up and suddenly seeing all sorts of stars in the night sky (along with a few airplanes and satellites). It was amazing. I wish I had that telescope then.
The infinite reaches of space always amaze me. It boggles my mind when you look at a star and realize that what you're seeing today happened many years ago. The star may not even exist today. I have a hard time with the whole "Earth is round" thing. I know it, but I have never really experienced it. I can certainly understand how people felt thousands of years ago. Guess I need to join the Flat Earth Society.
I was watching a program the other day that discussed how people would travel to Mars some day. That sort of math is far beyond my meager abilities. It looks so simple in a computer simulation, but the math behind it is insane. And I have to sit and shake my head when some astronomer talks about getting glimpses of the formation of the universe because of the vast expanse of space and time. My head hurts.
So I always have to laugh when someone wants to assign a retention period of "Permanent" or, periodically, "Infinity". Sure, yep, we'll get that calculated for you right away...
Owning a telescope in a metropolitan area leaves a lot to be desired, I suppose. When I was a Cub Scout, I recall that one of the things that we had to do to get a merit badge was see a satellite in the night sky. I recall all of us laughing at that because we could hardly see the stars! And in ca. 1972, there were no Internet sites that would enable you to schedule a time to see one fly over. There also were a whole lot fewer satellites in general.
When I moved to Quincy, Illinois to attend college, I can still remember going outside one night and looking up and suddenly seeing all sorts of stars in the night sky (along with a few airplanes and satellites). It was amazing. I wish I had that telescope then.
The infinite reaches of space always amaze me. It boggles my mind when you look at a star and realize that what you're seeing today happened many years ago. The star may not even exist today. I have a hard time with the whole "Earth is round" thing. I know it, but I have never really experienced it. I can certainly understand how people felt thousands of years ago. Guess I need to join the Flat Earth Society.
I was watching a program the other day that discussed how people would travel to Mars some day. That sort of math is far beyond my meager abilities. It looks so simple in a computer simulation, but the math behind it is insane. And I have to sit and shake my head when some astronomer talks about getting glimpses of the formation of the universe because of the vast expanse of space and time. My head hurts.
So I always have to laugh when someone wants to assign a retention period of "Permanent" or, periodically, "Infinity". Sure, yep, we'll get that calculated for you right away...
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