Top CEOs need to learn to use better tools

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/apr/01/what-time-ceos-start-day A less than surprising and mildly disappointing set of survey results at the Guardian on the working lives on some CEO’s. The less than surprising bit was the obvious nature of most of it ( get organised, early to bed early to rise, the blurring of work and family life because in fact it is your life that we are talking about here ) .These areas have alway been the mainstay of success and getting things done and are no less important now than for the past 100 years ( although email was less of an issue then of course ) The most disappointing part was the slavish addiction to email and the use of old fashioned tools like the Blackberry. One CEO claimed 500 email’s a day. Assuming a 10 hour working day thats 50 an hour, not including meetings, loo breaks, watercooler moments etc- that’s some some habit! Its surprising that the AOL, CEO, Tim Armstrong, needs advice on email. Frankly he should know better. The others may not know so much. So here, for free, advice. No thanks required. Contrary to popular belief email can be a useful tool. Its not bust or lacking in power. But its like any other tool. If its not the right tool for the job or is used in the wrong way its less than useful, like to trying to bake a cake with pair of pliers. Email is great for exceptional person to person messaging . ‘Just met with Google CEO. Really useful discussion on acquisition we spoke about. More when I see you’ AH or ‘Tim, Just fucked up big time on deal with Disney’ LOL ;-) AH Email is not designed to run your routine business communications on. Or to run a project. Or to manage customer services functions. It’s not meant as way of collaborating on a strategic business decision. The day to day work of people working together across time and space cannot be efficiently done using the wrong tools commonly provided by enterprise IT eg email ( for most that means Outlook and then Office and a copy of Internet explorer Far better to use modern tools . There are whole number around. Google Apps perhaps. Or Asana or one of my personal favorites the 37Signals suite. All these tools have one key advantage. They integrate communications and business functions ( calendar , comms, chat, scheduling, GTD, projects, CRM etc ) into one space and free email up to do what is does, best exceptional messaging. From 500 emails a day to 20 or 30? Can be done. It Is worth getting the right smartphone or tablet too. The traditional blackberry experience just makes matters worse as it email’s only. Hole and digging come to mind. To be fair Blackberry have realized this and have launched two new products that move the game on somewhat. Combining this choice with a device from Android or Apple or a even a Windows phone and you can have a great tool that integrates into your chosen productivity platform. Its worth reminding ourselves than an email addiction is a disease . It can be treated and recovery is possible. @julianfifield