Was Email a Mistake? (A Case for the Daily Huddle!)

This recent New Yorker article by past Gazelles Summit keynoter Cal Newport maps out the history of asynchronous communication beginning with the “tubes” at CIA headquarters.

An interaction is synchronous when all team members participate at the same time; asynchronous communication doesn’t require anyone to be present when a message is sent. A message can be sent at any time; you answer it at your leisure – Yes, EMAIL!

“The Radicati Group, a technology-research firm, now estimates that more than a hundred and twenty-eight billion business e-mails will be sent and received daily in 2019, with the average business user dealing with a hundred and twenty-six messages a day. “

Email Inadequacies

There’s nothing basically bad about e-mail as a tool where asynchronous communication is preferable—broadcasting an announcement or delivering a document. The difficulties really come to light when we try to start collaborative projects—planning events, developing strategies—asynchronously. Alas, communication becomes protracted and interminable.

To cut a long story short, companies are discovering that email is a terrible way to address challenges and solve problems.

Cal Newport states: “Recently, the founder and C.E.O. of a publicly traded technology company told me that he spends at most two or three hours a week sending and receiving e-mails; he has replaced most of his asynchronous messaging with a “regular rhythm” of meetings, which allows him to efficiently address issues in real time. ‘If you keep needing to send me urgent messages, then my assumption is that there’s something broken about the way you’re doing business,’ he said.”

The Daily Huddle

Newport describes how Silicon Valley discovered the power of a daily huddle: “The idea that a quarter of an hour of structured synchrony is enough time to enable a full day of work might sound preposterous, but, for more than twelve million software developers, it seems to be working.”

The Gazelles Scaling Up daily huddle brings the power of this synchronous communication to your entire company. Your competitors often dismiss it as too difficult to implement. They in turn can leave vast amounts of money and time on the table.

A regular “meeting rhythm” is at the heart of our Scaling Up system. Guess what? Humans were designed to talk!

Contact me to help implement your “meeting rhythm.”

All the best
David