I was giving a workshop on Information Overload at a midsized hi-tech company where it was agreed to use a standard format for meeting invitations: in addition to the subject, time and place required by Outlook, each such invitation would contain an agenda with a timetable, a list of desired outcomes, and “homework” to be prepared ahead of the meeting. That’s an excellent idea, which I urge you to consider applying in your own group.

But then one attendee asked: can we build this into the Outlook platform, so these added fields would be required and enforced automatically? And that is an even better idea, except that it’s very seldom applied. How come?

How Outlook could be modified to improve productivity

As it comes out of the box, MS Outlook is a decent communication platform, which is one reason why it’s so widely used. In recent versions some attention has been paid to the battle on information overload, and there are features that can help with that. Still, there are features that are not included – that’s why so many startups develop neat add-ins that augment the base product (you can find many of them in my Definitive Guide to IO solutions). In addition, communication culture varies from company to company, and there is a need for features that would support the cultural norms at each one.

Adapting Outlook to do your will is not very hard – it is designed to allow modification and add-ons. Some features can be added by almost anyone with minimal tech savvy, while others require more serious coding knowledge. For example, adding organization-wide custom forms that ensure communications follow the norms the company adopts – as in the meeting invitation format example above – is fairly straightforward.

Another example is the “Action Message template” solution that I describe here. This encourages people to write crystal-clear emails that specify “What / When / Why”, each in its own brief paragraph. This is extremely effective for both sender and recipient, but it would be much more common if the format were provided as an optional (or not?) custom “new message” form, launched by an additional “Compose mail” button in the user interface.

Or consider this: your group is finally aware of the advantage of keeping messages short, and exhorts people to do so: why, then, not have Outlook raise an alert when one exceeds a certain length in the email they’re composing? And why not have it identify ill-written messages, based even on the clarity of the language itself – a task computers are quite capable of tackling these days – and coach the sender to improve?

Then there are changes you can do on the server. This is more ambitious, but it’s been done. For example, by Volkswagen, where the BlackBerry servers have been programmed to withhold emails sent outside of work hours – in order to allow employees a respite from the constant barrage of work related messages.

The possibilities are endless – if only we would adapt Outlook to implement them!

Some common barriers to doing all this cool stuff

So – it’s easy to modify Outlook to help with our productive use of email. Why don’t we do it then?

Sadly, there are many barriers to implementing such changes. Here are some that I’ve seen in my long career as an information overload crusader:

• It sounds complicated. People hate change… all the more if it’s complex. So much easier to make a decision like “Include an agenda in every meeting invitation” and putting it on a poster, than actually coding the required customization of the calendaring application.
• It requires coders. Not every company has the required programming capability in-house. Large corporations do, of course; smaller ones may not. Outsourcing the effort is feasible but involves a hassle and some actual spending – and I have yet to see an organization with a budget called “Money reserved for enhancing productivity”…
• It rocks the IT boat. I’ve explained before why IT is generally risk-averse; I should know, having spent many years as a senior IT engineer. IT folks are normally charged with keeping enterprise systems steady and reliable, not with modifying them away from their base build.
• It involves touching the email application. Of course it does, you say – that’s the entire point, right? Well, yes – but senior managers (outside of IT) flinch at the very idea: email is such a mission-critical application that they’re very loath to mess with it.

All these make excellent excuses for doing nothing…

Why you should overcome these barriers

With all these reasons not to, it takes an effort to modify Outlook. And yet it’s an effort well worth making. It’s all a question of ROI.

Whatever the cost of defining and implementing the required changes, the benefit is guaranteed to exceed it. We’re talking here about mitigating a problem that can cost a large company around $1B (yes, Billion) a year (see here, in appendix 2). Any improvement will involve significant sums. What’s more, if you do this in the context of an email effectiveness improvement program, what we’re talking about comes under the heading of a Technology Assisted Behavior Change – and this increases the likelihood of success for the entire program.

What you can do about this

The first thing you should do is launch a program to improve email effectiveness in the group you manage or influence… this is the framework where the norms are defined that the technology can be called on to support.

Once you have this going, I urge you to resolve up front to have an open mind about technology modification. Get over the instinctive reaction of “don’t touch email”; have the courage to negotiate IT into supporting the behavior change you’ll be trying to implement; decide what you need them to do for your program and stay the course.

If you do this and can share interesting results, let me know!

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Solving Information Overload: Technology Assisted Behavior Change