When I arrive at the office each day, my first order of business is to start up my computer and check e-mail. Before I go to bed at night, I try to review my personal e-mail inbox, responding to any pressing matters there. I receive an average of close to 150 e-mails a day. According to John Freeman, in his book The Tyranny of E-Mail, the average office worker receives closer to 200. E-mail has taken businesses to new levels of communication, and some say it has already become more influential than the telephone. But has the use of e-mail grown out of control?
E-mail is now such a significant part of the job for the majority of business professionals, we can’t do without it. If a company’s mail server goes down even for minutes, there’s a sense of panic about what important messages might get missed. Mr. Freeman mentions that trillions of messages are sent every year, and the numbers continue to grow. Beyond reading, sorting and responding to messages, even the interruptions to the work process just from the alerts of arriving messages and the urge to check tend to lead to considerable inefficiency. In many ways, e-mail has made people’s jobs easier, but it has also added a new layer of complexity as they must juggle multiple “conversations” at once. And now, cell phones allow reading and responding to email from almost anywhere, in effect extending the workday to 24 hours, 7 days a week.
I’m not suggesting that the use of e-mail has grown too large, but I do believe it needs to be reined in a bit. Some of this can be managed on an individual level, setting aside certain times of the day to read and respond to e-mail. Another way to take control is in our expectations of others. Just because a message is instantly delivered, it does not necessarily require an instant response. We need to be realistic in our expectations and govern growth to make it positive.
I experienced another example of growing pains when I spent a week in Orlando, Florida, during the Christmas holidays. I’ve been in a number of largely populated cities around the world, but nowhere have I seen crowds as unmanageable, or at least mismanaged, as in and around Disney World. While it was clear that the majority of the people were from places other than Orlando, not having a plan for crowd control in an area that is constantly flooded with visitors is a clear sign of faulty growth.
Managing growth is essential to capitalizing on its advantages. This is true across the board, from technology to geography to growth within a company. Growth must be monitored and maintained to promote smooth transitions, which are absolutely necessary for keeping customers happy.
In this issue (see page 24) we visit Fisher-Barton South Carolina, a company specializing in precision stamping operations, including a large portion of the business dedicated to the production of lawn mower blades. Even during the rough economy of the past couple of years, this company has experienced some of its most profitable business conditions. Because business has been good, Fisher-Barton is in an aggressive growth mode. But the company is handling this growth wisely, putting the right equipment and personnel in place to make sure production can comfortably keep up with customer demand.
As we all look forward to better times ahead, we should be prepared for growth as well. Growth is good, but when our customers are ready to buy, we’d better have the processes and people in place to deliver quality products in a timely manner.
