As a CEO, I have to interact with our team, our strategic partners and our clients on a day-to-day basis. Effective and clear communication tools are a non-negotiable requirement of my job and I have been noticing that recently my email inbox is a mess and quite unusable! Too many emails from my staff, too many CCs and threaded discussions that are not relevant to me, very distracting. So, I have decided not to use any email for internal communications (which is not easy). From now on, I am using present.ly, our micro-blogging tool, to communicate my status, request help from my colleagues and also get their status.
So how is it going so far?
– Surprisingly, really well. Now my Inbox contains mostly client communications (the good kind).
– I post updates about once an hour (takes 10 seconds) so my team know exactly what I am up to and how the company is doing.
– Every once in a while, I do a quick scan on the stream, I get quick insights into what the rest of the team is doing. No more meetings, no more emails, no more phone calls, no more voice mails.
– I am so much more efficient and productive (and so is my team), I focus my attention our clients.
