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I was in the audience recently when the president of a multi-billion-dollar healthcare subsidiary told his top 100 leaders, “I don’t use email anymore.”

As the room went silent with surprise, the president conceded he was exaggerating to make a point: It’s far too easy these days to “communicate” by email, eliminating any opportunity for personal dialog or a personal connection. The president wanted his top leaders to know that he expected them to play an active role as communicators around an aggressive new growth strategy that most acknowledged would ruffle more than a few employee feathers.

Cheers to him for making the push. Every time I meet with groups of computer-equipped employees – regardless of the size or nature of their organization – they tell me they hate managing their email in boxes. Some admit that they read as few as one of every five emails they receive. And that means you’ve got a one-in-five shot at capturing their attention if you’re relying on email as your primary communications vehicle. As Matt wrote in an earlier post, more than seven in ten workers feel completely inundated with information.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that anyone abandon email altogether. I’m just urging business leaders and the communicators who support them to try a little harder to be personal when it comes to communicating important news. Hold your managers accountable. Arm them with information and ask them to meet with their teams. If they want to reinforce key messages by email, that’s fine – as long as they are making the effort at face-to-face communication as a rule and not an exception.

The healthcare subsidiary president has quite the challenge ahead. He’s got to get a change-resistant organization to either accept change or fall further off the pace in a highly competitive business environment. Do you think he has a prayer if all he does is send out an email in hopes that people respond? Neither does he.

Tags: e-mail, face-to-face communication, information overload

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 3:18 am and is filed under Business and social trends, Issue and change management, Leadership and executive communication, technology, tools and techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.