Four Overlooked Email Risks: II

In Part I of this series, we explored how email exchanges are susceptible to differences in the elapsed time between someone authoring a message and its recipients reading it. We called that elapsed time end-to-end latency. One consequence of what we called "end-to-end latency" is a lengthening of the time window during which incorrect message content might be mistakenly regarded as correct. In this Part II, we examine two more consequences of end-to-end latency.

Scrambled time order

Because of variations in latency, the time order (either receipt or origination) of contributions can differ from what would have been their time order if the conversation had been conducted in a synchronous medium environment, such as telephone, teleconference, or face-to-face. For example, in a synchronous medium, time order of contributions is identical for all participants. Not so in email, because of variations in end-to-end latency.

During the During the end-to-end latency
period of a given message,
the conversation can evolve in
ways that render the message
irrelevant, incorrect, or
worse — incorrect but
regarded as correctend-to-end latency period of a given message, the conversation can evolve in ways that render the message irrelevant, incorrect, or worse — incorrect but regarded as correct. Any recipients who read their email in forward time order of receipt (or origination) might be wasting their time, especially if they try to respond to a message that has been overtaken by events. This problem is amplified if they actually send responses based on an outdated understanding of the situation.

To manage this risk, some recipients might read their email in reverse time order of receipt (or origination). But they might have difficulty understanding later messages due to lack of context knowledge and backward references.

Polychronicity

In most synchronous meetings there's some control of the current topic. With more than three to five participants, the chair or facilitator calls on individuals, who are then expected to offer relevant contributions. In smaller meetings, cultural norms usually provide a relevance constraint that similarly ensures that contributions relate to the current topic. Such a conversation structure is called monochronic — it addresses one topic at a time.

By contrast, few email exchanges are facilitated. They are therefore more likely to be polychronic — addressing two or more topics concurrently. Participants are free to contribute whatever they want whenever they want. And because of variations in end-to-end latency, contributions to a particular topic can continue to appear even after most participants regard the topic as closed. The resulting structure might contain multiple "threads," developing in one intertwined and sometimes-confusing jumble. In some cases, a single message might contain contributions to multiple threads.

Some groups try to limit the confusion by means of email subject lines. By carefully pairing their contributions with appropriate subject lines, they can make conversation threads more obvious. But there is no central control. Each contributor is responsible for choosing the right subject line, and deviations are common. And topics can be reopened at any time. Often, confusion reigns.

The results we achieve with email are different from — and often inferior to — the results we would have achieved with actual conversation, either by telephone or face-to-face. Yet we use email because we choose not to spend resources on travel or state-of-the-art video conferencing. The choice might or might not be justified economically, but most organizations don't know, because they don't track the cost of bad decisions.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

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