Avoid e-mail overload and still keep everyone informed

Have you ever come back from vacation, or from a business trip of more than a few days, to find an overstuffed e-mailbox containing a blow-by-blow account of everything that happened while you were away? E-mail overload at its worst!

You know the kind of thing I mean: long e-mail threads with contributions from everyone in the department, each copying everyone else and many leading off into side threads and involving even more people. You have to read the whole thing just to know what's going on, and to see whether there's something you need to do.

This is a common problem, and one that comes up often in my consulting and training engagements. So I'm recommending a new way of keeping everyone in the loop --- without deluging them with e-mail.

The answer is a departmental blog. Now don't stop reading --- I know it may seem a bit radical, but bear with me and you'll see how this can be hugely effective in the situation I just described.

Most teams or departments routinely deal with a number of projects or processes.

A Sales team, for example, might have