A World Without Email

When you allow specialists to work with more focus, they produce more, and this extra value can more than compensate for the cost of maintaining dedicated support.

A bigger issue with this style of communication protocol is that its effectiveness will rapidly diminish if you allow the status meetings to become longer and less focused.

Knowledge work is better understood as the combination of two components: work execution and workflow.

This advantage is true of most automatic processes: eliminating unnecessary coordination does not just reduce frustration, but also increases resources to invest in the activities that really matter.

It’s in this context that the hyperactive hive mind, once in place, became devilishly difficult to eradicate, as it’s hard to fix a broken workflow when it’s no one’s job to make sure the workflow functions.

Friction also motivates the development of more intelligent processes.

When you eliminate support staff, the skilled professionals become less intellectually specialized, as they have to spend more time on administrative work that computers made just easy enough for them to handle on their own. As a result, it now requires more of these professionals to produce the same amount of valuable output for the market, as the

All things being equal, workflows that minimize this never-ending stream of urgent communication are superior to those that instead amplify it.

people don’t like changes they can’t control.