Some of the best solutions to information overload are simple and free

Now that I’ve finally published The Definitive Guide to Information Overload Solutions (whew!…), I can look at all the available solutions in one place; and one clear pattern I see is that some of the most effective solutions out there are so simple (and cost nothing) that you’d think everyone would adopt them. Which, sadly, is not what I see when I work to help my customers.

Among these solutions is the concept of properly applying the distinction, provided by all email programs, between TO, CC and BCC addressees. I have yet to see a company that applies this consistently – despite the fact that once I have them in a workshop or survey they often raise this as a major improvement opportunity.

Raise it, but don’t do it.

You don’t need to wait for my workshop… just read on and adopt this simple solution!

The proper usage of To and CC

To quote the Definitive Guide to IO Solutions, here is what you should do:

Define a policy to regulate the appropriate usage of To, CC and BCC in addressing messages.
A typical policy might be:
To = A reply (or action) is expected;
CC = No reply (or action) is expected.
(See below for comment on the use of BCC).

Sounds simple? Sure does: if you’re on the TO line, you have to do something. If you’re a CC, you don’t. In fact, CC is the mechanism of informing people they’re receiving the mail as an FYI.

Of course this begs the question: if you don’t have to do something, why did you have to receive the message at all? After all, it isn’t like you have a lot of spare time on your hands; if you’re like the typical overloaded knowledge worker, many of your TO emails remain unread… and indeed, curtailing the use of CC is a good thing to consider, although there will always be cases – for example, when a small project team needs to be kept informed – where some use of CC is justified.

Why you really want to do this in your group

Here is why you want your group to adhere to the TO/CC distinction:

• Having such a standard defined and adhered to will allow recipients to reliably set up rules or filters that prioritize emails based on their actionable significance, e.g. “Highlight the message if I am on the TO line”. This can directly accelerate collaboration in overloaded settings, by raising actionable messages in priority while reducing the overload for FYI recipients.
• Even without automation, glancing at the TO and CC lines tells the recipient a lot about the importance of the message to them – as one manager once told me, if he’s alone on the TO line he gives the message far more attention than if he’s one of numerous names on that line, which counts with him as a CC…
• Having to consider who to put into TO and CC forces senders to think – to consider who they’re sending to, what their roles are, and so forth. This will inevitably lead to better communication, and will likely result in tighter distributions and less overload for all.

Note that you need to apply this solution religiously. You need to have everyone in the group using the same addressing criteria in the same way, or you’ll lose much of the benefit. This is why the Guide defines this solution in terms of “Define a Policy”. And as with any policy, you need to educate everyone to adopt it – if people set up rules that de-prioritize CC messages, and senders do not adhere to the policy, it is possible that important messages (where the recipient was erroneously put on the CC line) will be ignored.

Misuse and abuse of CC

OK, so you now follow my advice and use CC only for FYI recipients. Are we good?

Not necessarily. It’s still possible to abuse CC – even if you correctly apply it to people with no action items in the message.

A sadly common practice is to use CC as a channel of CYA. You mail someone – a TO recipient with an action item – but also CC their supervisor, to ensure the first recipient pays attention to your demand on their resources. This is really evil – not only are you implicitly threatening the recipient (“do this task or I’ll have your boss all over you”) but you also waste the boss’s time by increasing their own email overload.

In some organizations the same behavior is adopted not as a threat but as a result of a culture of disempowerment: the sender may feel too insecure and copies his or her own boss, to make sure they’re OK with the message. Or they may copy many people, to ensure none of them gets offended or upset because they weren’t informed (of something they had no real need to know).

You really want to take a long look at your Inbox (and Sent Items folder) and check for such behaviors, which are destructive in themselves and often indicate deeper cultural problems.

OK, so what about BCC?

BCC – Blind Carbon Copy – is a tricky business, and it’s important to understand its use and its limitations.
Using BCC for ordinary one to few messaging is usually frowned upon, for two reasons:

• Many modern enterprises consider it to be “sneaky”, and in conflict with their company culture – for instance, with values like “Openness” or “Respect for People”.
• BCC messages are usually hidden for a reason, and can do significant harm if their cloak of secrecy is blown – as it will be, in many cases (and, in accordance with Murphy’s laws, at the worst possible time). People can inadvertently forward a BCC message, or reply-to-all, causing potentially major embarrassments (incidentally, Standss SendGuard, an Outlook add-in worth knowing, will detect a Reply to All on a BCC and alert you before sending it!)

There is, however, one situation where BCC is not only useful but outright necessary: when you send a blast email to a large distribution, put everyone on the BCC line. Otherwise, when they Reply to All – and some idiot always does – it can lead to a major flurry of unnecessary messages, and even to an Email Storm (unless you’ve removed the RTA button in the company).  Always use BCC to preempt such disasters.

What you can do about this

The problem with TO/CC is that everyone has to do it to get the full benefit. You’d do well to make the proper distinction in addressing your own messages, but you can’t rely on it for incoming messages without the entire group being on the same page. And getting a group to change its ingrained behavior is one difficult endeavor… if you’re the boss, you may be able to drive it top down, which is easier; otherwise you may want to read my article about driving internal change for some ideas how to proceed (safely).

As always, if you want some help for driving changes in email culture, you know who to call.