CC your A$$
About Chris
Chris Lyman is the Founder and Chairman of the Board at Fonality. Fonality creates innovative and affordable phone systems for small and medium businesses. Our products include PBXtra, trixbox Pro, and trixbox CE.
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CC your A$$
The rantings of a serial entrepreneur as he wins, loses, and doesn't pull any punches in describing both...
CC your A$$
(1,049 emails left in my Inbox)
Email is ruining my company. Not because of SPAM or viruses or because no matter how many times I click I never seem to satisfy my long-lost Nigerian relative.
No, I have gotten to the point where I am 1,000 emails behind.
As a CEO, this is strategically dangerous for a company.
You scoff at me. You chortle. Perhaps you risk a guffaw. You thought email was efficient, and when you had 5 employees it was. But now, it is killing YOU TOO in ways you don't even know.
It is WASTING YOUR TIME. It is DESTROYING your accountability and STRIPPING your employees of ownership. Welcome to what I call the "CC disease" or "CC your a$$". It's a virus I tell you - spreading seeds of inefficiency through your company at the speed-of-packet.
Let me break it down:
Everyone and their mother inside of your company is CCing (or multi-TOing) everyone else, also inside your company. They send these spasmodic digital distributions to accomplish three basic objectives:
- You wanted to let us know what was "going on."
Unfortunately, a bunch of people replied, creating wave after wave of response to all parties, never letting the thread die. Everyone's eye-time was wasted reading everyone else's anecdotal reply to your "quick" email.My advice: send these emails with a footer of "DO NOT REPLY TO ALL."
- You just wanted to let your boss know: "I'm on it."
You wanted to CC(over) your a$$, so when your boss gave you that new task you CC'd him/her. Sadly, you ended up dragging your boss into wave after wave of CC hell. Trust that your boss trusts you. Do the task first. Then, send a one-liner saying "The job is done." Sit back and wait for your raise.My advice: DO NOT CC YOUR BOSS.
- You wanted a quick answer so you sent the email to four people.
First, you wasted four peoples' time. Inefficient. Then, nobody knew who the damn owner was so nobody felt compelled to answer you! Third, you will likely get conflicting answers. This is a case of LESS is more.My advice: SEND TO JUST ONE PERSON AND DEMAND OWNERSHIP.
I have come, over the years, to hate business email because of the CC disease and I finally have a solution. By the end of this week, our corporate mail server (postfix), will be politely rejecting any email sent to me, from anyone else *inside* my company, that is sent to anyone else besides me. If you want me, send it JUST to me and I will OWN it so you can RELAX.
P.S. Tech challenge: got some postfix code to help me accomplish my objective?
--
Chris Lyman
Fonality CEO & Janitor
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CCs vs BCCs
Thanks for this blog update Chris. CCs seem to invite conversation. Every suggestion is important, but sometimes an issue isn't more complex then the initial email. As a result the conversation that starts can turn irrelevant and waste time.
I try and battle CCs with BCCs. I make the assumption that if others don't see their name in the To: line they know it wasn't to them and they are there to view from the sidelines. Before doing this I ask myself if I'm 100% sure the person in the To: line wouldn't mind others reading the email.
Your solution sounds like a better one in that everyone can see who received it, but they don't feel invited to converse when it's not needed.
ask and you receive
my $from;
while()
{
$from = $1 if($_=~/^From:(.+)$/);
if($_=~m/^To/i or $_=~m/^CC/i){
send_polite_note($from) if($_=~m/.+\@.+\@.+/);
}
sub send_polite_note{ system("mail -s 'sorry cant send your super important cc note to the janitor' $from");
It was ME!
Okay, I was the culprit who inspired this blog entry. At least I can say that I had a CEO/Janitor blog written (sort of) about me.
I did it again today, and received this:
PROBLEM: Your email was *not* received by Chris Lyman.
REASON: You had more than one person on your To, CC, or BCC.
SOLUTION: If you are trying to email Chris Lyman, send the email to him privately.
WHY: Email overload is affecting Chris such that he is over 1,000 emails behind and it is getting worse everyday.
Thank you.
Looks like our Janitor got some code to solve his problem! No longer will I ever make the mistake again.
Auto Respond Loop of Death
Actually, I am thinking about setting an auto-responder on my end, that will automatically forward your rejection back to you.
Its will be an arms race! Mutually Assured Destruction!
Not Slowing Down
I like working for this guy. And wiping my nose I'll give you the _real_ reason: he's got almost 10 years on me and hasn't slowed down a tick. It's good to know that all the years people said 'slow down' I can proudly say 'I follow a guy who didn't - and it's working out alright for him!'
Response - Extra Emails
I guess people will just send you in an extra e-mail the same stuff that they would normally have sent you as CC:
You're Right
Markus - You are right, there has been (just a) little of this. But, the net effect has been amazing. Instead of getting 11 CCs, I now get one short crisp email that either has a question for me to answer, or tells me that the task is done. Pretty soon, I will do a follow-up blog to report the results of my controversial social email experiment (*grin*). Yes, there has been some "bad" with the "good", but so far, it seems the good has vastly outweighed the bad.
../chris
CC your A$$ Foo!
Spam everyone you know and inform them that if they CC you they will be black listed, but explain to them once again why they are black listed and why they can go puncd sand up their CC A$$
cya
it's the cya mentality that spawns the CC and if you are that paranoid that you have to cya w/ a cc then you're fired!
Send mail ! (it's easier than working)
There was a time when e-mails were drafted like letters. There was the purpose of being cordial as well as being informative.
Nowadays it seems that e-mails serve neither purpose. One-liner msn-type blarps that you can't use in any way of managing information.
Sending an e-mail is a couple of clicks away. Receiving e-mails forces the recipient to perform information management whichever way you look at it.
- Do I need to act on this mail? If so, when?
- Do I need to store it? Where?
- Delete it? Now? Tomorrow? Next week?
Remember the time when there was only one pc in the office connected to the Internet? There was no intra-office e-mail back then, and still we managed to run our businesses.
So listen up young twirps out there.. stop wasting everybodies time, and stop using your keyboard to communicate. Use your voice and talk to people !
Leo
Amen!
Leo - Amen to that! Over half of the non-SPAM emails I receive each day are superfluous. I instantly delete them, do not commit them to memory, and take no action upon them.
Most of this is CC email.
../chris
Regarding the Emails
It funny how I get the exact spam mails over and over regarding the transfer of fund to my bank account from some rich Prince or government official overseas. There is no end in sight.
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