Email is the appropriate broadcast or distribution forum for non-time-sensitive mass mailing, sending newsletters, for issuing memos (where an electronic record should be retained) and for sending large attachments. It is superb for contracts, as well. It is becoming somewhat outmoded by many other signaling mechanisms and applications, but it is still quite useful.
Having said this, email does not work, (certainly not even as effectively as instant messaging, rapid back-and-forth texting, telephoning, web conferencing or just getting together (in the real world, and not in some coffee chatroom in cyberspace), for having a conversation. Here's why:
1) Too much time may lapse between sending, receiving and responding. Momentum is lost, timeliness is lost, spontaneity is lost, and nuances of meaning are lost. Emails are cold representatives, and very flat-affect messengers. No brainstorming every happened through a discrete series of emails.
2) If your email subject line isn't a grabber, you're liable to wind up being inadvertently deleted -- and you'll sit stewing in anger on the wrongful assumption that your email was read. There is so much correspondence in the average inbox that your missive is likely to be missed. If it is read by the intended recipient, it may be read more than a day after it was sent.
3) Email now carries a cache, deservedly or not, of being one-sided, and is generally read with a modicum of prejudice against the sender. The hidden message that supersedes and often outweighs the email content is that "I am making a declaration from the mountaintop, and I don't wish to be interrupted by your thoughts or questions."
If you truly want to accomplish something, conversations are best carried out where there is a facility and expectation of rapid thought and response...sort of like neurons transmitting a signal.
The bottom line is this: Use email wisely. It is a useful tool for transmitting information. But never use it as a platform for passionate, urgent or sensitive conversation. It works against you.
http://SendingSignals.blogspot.com
http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com
http://www.TNNWC.com
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