Hack:
"Glass House" E-mail System

Gary,

I really like the general idea of extreme transparency, but I think you've overshot the target. I'd like to propose a modification of your idea that achieves the same ends with a system that's more focused and perhaps more plausible.

First, let's retain the idea that some communication is, and should be, private. Just exposing "everything" does not necessarily provide any real value and likely goes beyond the point of diminishing returns. Plus, private conversations will still occur, they'll just go underground. Second, let's distinguish between emails that are just communication only and those that are about taking action. The conversations that matter are the ones that have to do with actually accomplishing a task or delivering an outcome - i.e. people making requests of each other that others deliver on. These conversations for action are what really add value and moves the organization forward. Furthermore, one can make a reasonable argument that new outcomes are the stuff that should be exposed because it's the outcomes that affect everyone.

That said, we can envision the whole organization as a network of interrelated and interdependent action/delivery-based conversations. The CEO makes requests for certain outcomes from the VP's, the marketing department makes requests of engineering, project managers make requests of team members, employees make requests of HR, managers make requests, etc. Visualizing this network of request-to-delivery conversations would indeed provide spectacular insights and could reasonably be shared with all. As you point out, "leaders" would emerge. "Reputations" would be built on the basis of on-time delivery statistics, and "scoring" would be based on actual metrics. Of course, to actually do such a thing, would take a very forward-thinking company where a fundamental culture of trust already exists. Very rare today, but I'm betting those companies are coming, and we're building the software tools they will need to support this type of transparency.

"Development of an e-mail scoring system, by which employees are scored on the efficiency and effectiveness of their e-mails." That is a great idea!

Originally email was a very practical way to distribute more quickly the MEMOs of the 80's. It now has reached a ridiculous volume. It is used in lieu of IM, Texting, and Telephone. If people had to type and print and distribute their email the way they did the MEMOs of the 80s, they would certainly think twice before writing. And they would think twice before "cc'ing" half the company... How often have you been copied on a memo and wondered why on earth you should care?

email scoring system? Is this the begining of the Semantic E-mail or E-mail 3.0?

Kahatika is something like this, although Kahatika incorporates more elements of the business system in it's design.
Innovation can no longer work in isolation. Gunter Pauli speaks of it in terms of physical resource management but the same applies to Human Resource Management. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQBp6z4j704

I love the idea and the thoughtfulness of the approach. I see email as selfish and an impediment to innovation for many of the reasons given above (link to my thoughts below). Do we want to keep email in this top positive of organizational communication? When I read, "expectation set that all e-mails are the beginning (first “thread”) of a company-wide forum, rather than a private conversation" I wondered whether this could be a two step hack: Create an expectation that email should be 1% of the communication and that company-wide forums should take over the lead. Would this juggling help with some of the challenges noted?

http://www.terrigriffith.com/blog/2010/04/14/kill-email-keep-your-enemie...