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ave you ever sent an e-mail and within a day or two found yourself in a nasty conflict with one or even several people that you never even intended to 'fight' with?

The 'buzz in town' is social everything, such as sharing, networking and activism, fueled by social technologies. Nevertheless, good old e-mail has a steady and still growing hold on business.

There are about 3.6 billion e-mail accounts worldwide with almost 1 billion serving corporate infrastructure. Businesses send/receive a staggering 90 billion e-mails per day and more than a quarter of the average worker's day is spent answering and reading e-mails.

Yet, we have few established rules and guidance about e-mail and its culture and we know little about how to best use this means of communication and why it sometimes goes wrong. This is an unfortunate reality because, on average, each individual sends/receives 115 e-mails per day, in addition to communication on social networks.

And, if used wisely, companies can potentially raise the productivity of knowledge workers by an estimated 20-25 percent through electronic communication.

So, how can we avoid some of the conflicts e-mail usage creates in our daily lives?

Unwrapping E-mails

E-mails are asynchronous. The moment when other people see your e-mail may be shortly after you send it or several days later, or never (which means you don't always know if someone has actually read it). This time lapse may not only change the situation of the matter at hand, it also means that you don't know when people will respond, if ever. It may happen in haste or after thoughtful processes. One residual of the asynchronicity is that e-mails, for good and bad, are recordable and traceable. We can usually find them again, later on and so can other people.

E-mails are acontextual. The receiver of an e-mail may be in a similar work-office situation as you were when you wrote it, having a reasonable amount of time to reflect and perhaps analyze the information. But what if that is not the case? Especially with e-mails pushed on smartphones, a receiver may read them in situations that are very different and not always suitable, such as in a restaurant or when driving (God forbid)! And even then, one often feels obliged to give a quick response, while the email is competing with other stimuli for attention.

E-mails are textual. Disregarding attachments, e-mails remain a rather simple form of communication, i.e. words. While the isolation from emotions may please some people, it neglects some of the most valuable information in a conversation. What we cannot get from an e-mail are social cues and seeing instant reactions from the people who read it. Facial expressions, for example, allow us to interact or interfere quickly with additional information or 'repairing' our actions.

E-mails bundle arguments. Some e-mails are very short and to the point, but many are not. Longer e-mails tend to contain several pieces of information and arguments and when the receiver(s) read it, often in haste, he/she may get personally upset about one single item which was only a fraction of the entire e-mail and perhaps not even important, or not meant in the way it was perceived. Subsequently we respond to it, or forward it, with the commentary focusing on the part that 'ruffled our feathers' or perhaps threatened our power base.

One to the mass. It is easy to expand the number of receivers on an e-mail, from a few people to entire distribution lists and companies. And there are the little 'rat-tricks' of putting powerful managers in 'cc' to increase chances of action, or replying 'to all' when you have nothing relevant to add. But from the 'send' moment an e-mail is literally out of your control in terms of who forwards it on to whom and with what comments. If a conflict goes into an emotional spiral, this is a problem because we tend to reciprocate what we perceive as others' aggressions and in these situations 'everybody and his dog' can pitch in and witness what is going on.

The above may guide our thoughts on how e-mails differ from other forms of communication, such as face-to-face conversations (remember those?). We must constantly make sure to try and match the type of communication vehicle to the need. Some tools have complete synchronicity and richness, such as in-person meetings and video-skyping to some extent, yet e-mails do not.

As we reflect on e-mail usage, here are some tips for improving the quality of e-mail life:
'¢Monitor your emotions. If you feel triggered or offended by what you read, don't write an immediate reply back. You may regret it once you calm down and by then, it's too late. Sleep on it or show it first to a friend or a trusted advisor.
'¢Be careful with sarcasm and humor because voice tone is absent and often wittiness does not travel well across cultures. Moreover, if you offend somebody, the message could end up in the wrong hands (privacy is rather dead!). Same with sloppiness, even if e-mails are informal by nature, they still need to represent you and your company the right way.
'¢Keep it short and to the point. Most e-mails are way too long and if it fills more than one screen, perhaps it is better to Skype or call because your message is too complex for email. It is important to make sure the e-mail contains a call for action (or other purpose) and use the subject field to state what the topic is.
'¢Be cautious using the auto-reply function 'I am out of the office,' as this refers to a fixed-location based idea of work. In today's digitally interconnected world we are all still reachable and companies have grown accustomed to it.

Dr. Karsten Jonsen is a Research Fellow at IMD (www.imd.org).