The Case to Kill Email Before It Kills You

Email. What a beautiful and easy tool in modern business. Draft your message. Edit. Add who you want it to go to. Hit send. When a new message comes into your inbox, read and then 'reply all.' Repeat cycle. Add tons of attachments that others can download. Have a hard time tracking which document is the right one for your current project? No worries, just email the person who sent out the original. Forgot to cc that person to the chain? No worries, add them 10 emails in so they have to go back and read the entire thread. When you are done emailing and replying to over 150 people per day, you then can go home and work on your real work.

This is the modern scenario for everyone in business in 2014. Or is it? For an ever growing mobile workforce it is not. I probably spend most of my time doing work directly on my mobile handset. I even shoot and edit real time video from it in this day and age. For those who think email is a necessity I would argue it is archaic and inefficient. It is an outdated model quickly being usurped by mobile apps and other communication channels. It has no place in a modern large organization or a small business with the exception of running your direct email marketing programs. I guess it's helpful in registering for a new app or service but social login now has disrupted that need.

Earlier this year, I was getting so frustrated with the sheer volume of email I was receiving on a daily basis I decided to alter direction by stating the unthinkable. I told my team "no more emails between us." We created our own Yammer* group instead. Since that time, we've now used Yammer for day-to-day communications, project planning and document sharing. In addition most of us use tons of other external channels. Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Skype, etc to help with dialog beyond email. We've cut down email by 75% and upped output by 40% just on my team. My long term plan is to go email free and strictly use other forms of mobile communication. A twenty-something reader based in Silicon Valley, Brooklyn, London, Tel Aviv or anywhere in the world is probably laughing. I can hear it now, "I mean, who uses email anymore for work? What you are planning to do is no big deal." My friend at Facebook says he gets four emails a day. "We all use chat and in person meetings, Geoff," he told me, "We move ridiculously fast. Email is considered a relic, sort of like a land line."

Yet, you'd be surprised at the amount of companies clinging onto the "system." A system very internal-facing that doesn't meet the speed or need of modern business. A system ripe for disruption in terms of making organizations more, not less efficient. Clive Thompson, author of the book "Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better," argues that email is now so inefficient, it needs an intervention at most large companies. Thompson notes the following, "People feel the need to include 10 other people on an email just to let them know they are being productive at work. But as a result, it ends up making those other 10 people unproductive because they have to manage that email."

So what are we to do if we're truly going to enter the future of work where everyone can benefit? One thing is certain in my opinion: email needs to go. But once it's phased out for newer forms of communication, what are the types of communication, apps and services that should take its place? Below is a small list for why email needs to be killed and another list on what can be used to replace it. By all means, this list isn't final. I'd love to hear from you on this topic and your point of view.

Remember, outliers change how others perceive the world. Cable cord cutters were once seen as a small, fanatical group but are now gaining steam. Email evaders are next in a long line of vocal advocates looking for new ways to make work, well, work.

The Case to Kill Email:

• Studies have shown email leads to an unproductive and anxiety-ridden workplace.
• Email is too slow for the modern world of business. For real time communications, an email isn't the quickest way to get an answer. Chat services and SMS are much quicker and conducive to mobile.
• Email is terrible for group communication. Yet the workplace is all about group communication.

The Services to Replace Email:

• For internal conversation, Yammer, Convo, Slack, Jive and Cotap are five very good services. All are social and mobile by design and platform agnostic.
• Video P2P. Why not talk to people you do business with globally using many of the services that allow you to see each other? Skype*, Lync*, Google Hangouts, Spreecast plus new features added to Snapchat are just a few.
• Project management: Basecamp, Sharepoint*, Yammer can help keep all documents from being "emailed" back and forth to various people with 'reply all' confusion.
• External: If you do a lot of client work and need to be tied to email, I get it, but more and more clients and customers can be found on various networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. The majority have direct messaging services. Plus in a world increasingly going mobile and leaning toward the interest graph and small mobile clusters, WhatsApp makes more and more sense in terms of why Facebook acquired it.

Geoffrey Colon is a thought leader and evangelist at Microsoft. He uses the Apple iPhone 5S to do a lot of his work but also the Surface 2 with Windows 8 noting he likes to work across various operating systems and products just like a customer. Follow his strong points of view on Twitter, read his thought leadership on Tumblr and listen to his broadcast about "business in the era of the start-up" on Disruptive Innovation FM. He's a huge fan of LinkedIn and has been on the platform since 2006. Want to connect with him in person? Meet up with Geoff in Seattle, WA or in Brooklyn, NY when he's visiting his hometown. Just don't ask for his email.

*Disclaimer: These are Microsoft-owned companies which is my employer