Saturday, May 17, 2008
They don't call it a "killer app" for nothing. E-mail is corporate culture's favorite new weapon.
May 9, 2002 | "Rapidity is the essence of war," Sun Tzu writes in "The Art of War." "Take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots." It's a lesson that could just as well apply to corporate warfare as to the conventional battlefield. And it's one I learned the hard way.
It happened while I was a working at a large Internet start-up in the mid-1990s. My boss asked me to write a proposal for a partnership between our company and a major East Coast media firm. It was my chance to shine, perhaps even to earn a promotion.
I had just finished a first draft when a co-worker assisting me -- I'll call her "Joan" -- asked to see what I had written. So I e-mailed her a copy. The next thing I knew, she had forwarded my proposal, along with a note describing herself as the principal author, to the entire executive team managing the project.
I had been duped, and I felt humiliated. But I soon got my revenge. Later, while putting the finishing touches on the report, I got a call from Joan asking to see the updated version. "Sure," I said, and hung up the phone. I quickly finished and attached the report to an e-mail addressed to every VP and director I thought would be interested. This time it was clear that I was the one who had done all the work. I put Joan's name at the bottom of the distribution list and clicked "send." Game over.
It was my first experience with the down-and-dirty politics of corporate e-mail, a communications tool that to my mind perfectly suits the needs of those following Sun Tzu's timeless advice on taking your enemy by surprise.
Why e-mail? It's fast, simple to use, and offers the sender nearly immediate access to anyone on a corporate network. It's also readily available as more and more businesses get wired. "E-mail is becoming the dominant form of communication within companies," says Joyce Graf, vice president of e-mail for the Gartner Group, which estimates that of the more than 5.5 trillion e-mails sent worldwide last year, about half were business related.
Strategies for manipulating e-mail in the workplace run the gamut, from the carefully targeted attack -- blind copying someone's boss with incriminating information on a co-worker -- to what you might call "the Suicide Bomber," a disgruntled employee's company-wide flame designed to stir up trouble for his employer with little regard for his future reputation or financial status.
Each technique shares the common element of surprise. Sometimes the blow is fatal. Other times it's just a huge headache. Always, it happens very quickly.
The Passive-Aggressive Product Manager
Paul Devine, a San Francisco-based programmer, recalls several run-ins over e-mails he received from a product manager while working at Liquid Audio, a developer of secure software for distributing digital music.
The product manager wanted Devine, who was the company's director of Web development, to take on a job that he did not have time to do. When he explained this to her during a meeting, she acquiesced without comment, but he sensed something was wrong.
"I could tell she was irritated and annoyed, but she would never vent her frustration directly to me," he says. "Then I'd leave and she'd e-mail a project plan to my boss, the CEO and other executives. In it there would be several items attributed to me that I had specifically told her I wouldn't do."
Each time this happened -- and it happened several times -- Devine was forced into damage control mode. He scheduled meetings with his boss, his team, and the product manager herself to set the record straight. "Sometimes I would march in to her office and go ballistic," he says. "She would play dumb like she didn't understand, but I knew what she was doing."
Devine, it should be noted, isn't above using e-mail to his own ends. While working at MacWorld, the computer magazine, he once used it to successfully deflect a CEO's request for a project that he viewed as unnecessary.
"We can do what you want, but it will require us to change a line item in the budget," he wrote the CEO in a message that was copied to the chief financial officer. When the CFO wrote back hastily to protest any changes in the budget, the CEO withdrew his request. "I wasn't about to say no to the CEO, so I had to think of another strategy," says Devine.
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