Proof that You Don’t Need Rely Upon E-Mail

I love stories like these.

VentureBeat recently ran a great piece about Mejor Trato, a neat Mexican company that has junked e-mail, meetings, and managers. To say that the results are striking would be a vast understatement: Permanent four-day weeks.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Is Mejor Trato Unique?

Well, yes and no. I haven’t heard of many organizations that have adopted three-day weekends, never mind 86’d the notion of a manager. (With regard to the latter, Zappos is one of the few.)

On the other hand, MT is hardly the only company to realize the insanity of “collaborating” over a technology rooted in the paper corporate memo. Via three full-length case studies, I endeavored in Message Not Received to introduce actual companies that have embrace new, truly collaborative tools. I like to think that I succeeded, but make no mistake: Plenty of other organizations not profiled in the book get it—and more are coming on board every day.

Nothing is stopping you from slaying the e-mail dragon.

You may be thinking that eradicating e-mail would never work in your organization. Maybe you’re right. But what about significantly reducing its internal use? Not possible? Nonsense.

Simon Says

A point from the book bears repeating here: We love to blame technology (in this case, e-mail) because it can’t blame us back. Nothing is stopping you, your group, your department, your division, and/or your organization from experimenting with different alternatives. You’re only a Google search and a few clicks away.

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