Twelve years ago, I wrote a post called “7 tips to make email more acceptable”. At the time, I believed email had become one of the great productivity drains in modern work.

I wasn’t wrong. I was just looking at the wrong problem.

Email was never the real issue. The issue was how we used it.

Since then, organizations have added Teams, Slack, Zoom, WhatsApp, Signal, AI assistants and countless collaboration platforms. These tools promised better communication. In many cases, they simply created more places to check, more messages to process and more expectations to manage.

Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index reported that nearly half of employees and more than half of leaders say their work feels chaotic and fragmented. The average employee now receives 117 emails and 153 Teams messages daily. Employees are also interrupted, on average, every two minutes by a meeting, email or notification.

That is not communication. That is fragmentation.

Harvard Business Review made a similar observation. A Gartner survey cited by HBR found that 38 per cent of employees receive an excessive volume of communications, while only 13 per cent received less information in 2022 than they did the year before.

The problem is not that email failed. The problem is that we kept adding channels without creating better communication discipline.

As a technology and security executive, I also see this as more than a productivity concern. When decisions are scattered across email, chat, text messages, side channels and unmanaged tools, organizations lose context, accountability and institutional memory. They can also create governance, records-retention, privacy and security risks.

The solution is not another tool. It is better judgement.

Email is useful when you need a documented decision, asynchronous communication, referenceable context or coordination across time zones. It is a poor choice for urgency, conflict, emotional nuance, brainstorming or fast clarification.

Leaders set the standard. If executives send non-urgent messages late at night, people notice. If leaders copy large groups to signal visibility rather than accountability, people notice. If leaders reward concise, thoughtful and well-targeted communication, people notice that too.

AI will not solve this on its own. It can summarize threads, draft responses and identify action items. Those are useful capabilities. But AI cannot answer the most important question:

Should this message be sent at all?

Technology can improve efficiency. Only judgement improves effectiveness.

My guidance today is simple:

  1. Choose the right channel.
  2. Respect other people’s attention.
  3. Write clearly and state the decision or action required.
  4. Do not confuse visibility with productivity.
  5. Ask whether the message is necessary.

The original post wasn’t wrong. The tools have changed dramatically, but human behaviour has not.

The challenge was never fixing email.

The challenge was learning how to communicate.

How does your team decide which channel to use, and what behaviours do your leaders reinforce every day?

Ethics and disclosure

This article reflects my personal views and is provided for general informational purposes only. It does not represent the views of my employer, clients, partners or any organization with which I am affiliated.

Nothing in this article should be interpreted as legal, compliance, security, privacy or professional advice. Readers should evaluate their own organizational context, risk profile and regulatory obligations before making decisions.

I do not have a financial relationship with any company or publication referenced in this article. Links are provided for reader convenience and source transparency.

Sources and further reading

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