October 1998   E-mail

I speak at lots of trade shows and technology conferences, and many of the most frequently asked questions concern e-mail. People ask me, "Do you use it regularly?" "Is it useful, or is it just really annoying?" And then there’s the ever popular, "How can I stop getting it?"

Well, as a businessperson today--a manager, an assistant, a boss, and most especially, an entrepreneur--you must understand that although e-mail can be your best friend, it can also be your worst enemy. Like a lot of other technology, it depends how you use it and what you use it for.

Consider my company. When we first started 1-800-FLOWERS®, way, way back in the dark ages (the mid 1980s), just having a toll-free number was cutting edge. These days, we have a networked collection of florists on our BloomLink server, and we provide on-line, real-time credit verification and confirmation. Our point-of-sale systems manage supplies, sales, and exchange orders with other shops on our network in a fraction of the time it used to take to write everything down and make a phone call. And there are still some old-fashioned people who call us on that handy toll-free number.

E-Mail is a Tool

My point is that we've continually invested in technology, in making sure we've had the tools that make it easier to stay in touch with our customers--and with each other. One tool is e-mail. These days, people take e-mail for granted, but back in the early 1990s, when we started using it, it was considered pretty avant-garde. We invested the time and money to have 1-800-FLOWERS up on e-mail, not just because our customers were there or because we'd just launched a Web site, but because it helped create more time for us to interact internally.

We've always looked at technology that way--as a tool. And so it is with e-mail: It's something that makes it possible to accomplish more--with more people, more efficiently. But it's not a replacement for real-time, real-world interaction. It's only a supplement, and that's the pitfall many entrepreneurs don't understand. Trust me.

E-mail Overload

As the president of 1-800-FLOWERS, I get more e-mail than most other people at our company, and it's very easy to get buried in it. I'm guessing that I get hundreds of messages daily. In fact, it's gotten to the point where my executive secretary has to spend part of her day going through my in-box, weeding out the superfluous messages. I get cc’ed on almost everything, you see (I'm on many group e-mail distribution lists), and I often find that the messages I receive don’t really concern me.

Even though much of the stuff I get is useful to know, the higher up the corporate food chain you are, the less time you have to read all those extra memos, copies of reports, lunch menus, and the like. In my position as an entrepreneur who runs a large, growing business, I'm always thinking of new ways to expand 1-800-FLOWERS. I need to keep doing that, but I don’t need to be involved in trying to figure out who owns the 1978 Monte Carlo with the lights on in the parking lot or why, until next Thursday, the mail room will have only blue pens.

And as annoying as that kind of e-mail can be, it’s even worse when I get it when I’m the road. As I mentioned, I do a lot of speaking engagements, and I also travel close to 50 percent of my time because 1-800-FLOWERS has locations across the country. I consider e-mail to be one of the best ways invented to keep in touch with what's going on back home. In fact, it's probably the most efficient way to stay in the loop when I’m away--unless I have to wade through ten useless messages to read a single one that’s worth my time.

An Entrepreneur's Dilemma

I'm partly to blame, though; I make my personal mailbox available to everyone at 1-800-FLOWERS. For entrepreneurs like me, therein lies the dilemma. Having built the company by interacting personally with employees, customers, vendors, and others, I'm not about to isolate myself now. Being accessible is a choice I’ve made, and it's something that I believe in, even if it can (and does) result in a lot of e-mail garbage.

Every entrepreneur makes a similar decision when he or she makes the transition from just getting an idea to work (like any old 800 number for flowers) to building and growing a large company with a recognized brand based on that idea (like 1-800-FLOWERS, the world's favorite florist). After you've made it, it can become very difficult to let go of the reins, especially when bootstrapping your way to the top is what got you there.

But in a growing company with lots of locations, hands-on approaches, at some point, need to become hands-off. I've made that transition by doing what has to be done to cope with any kind of growth concerns--technological or otherwise--that could threaten our values. My advice? Find a middle ground that enables advancements to work for you.

Finding a Middle Ground

In my case, I've used e-mail to make myself accessible. It keeps me involved in the whole company, albeit passively: I read what I choose. Sure, I'd love to visit all of my stores and talk to all of my employees every day, but that's unrealistic. Reading about developments via e-mail, if I choose to, is one of my solutions; it's the middle ground that works for me, even if it can sometimes be an annoyance.

Early on, e-mail created another problem when people would use it as an excuse for missing deadlines. I hated hearing that things hadn’t worked because someone had "e-mailed you and was waiting for feedback," or projects fell through "because my e-mail was down." People seemed to think that just by making sure the boss was included in a list or a mailing, they had covered their butts. It wasn't enough, and it created missed opportunities. And that's something no entrepreneur can let happen too often.

These days, I've made sure that my employees know it's not only unacceptable to rely solely on e-mail to keep me in the loop, but that I much prefer meeting with them (if only for a few minutes). I've made it clear that I believe e-mail can complement those discussions, but it can't replace them entirely. Like all technology, e-mail is just a substitute for interaction.

On the strictly technical side, finding the middle ground was easier than that. We've continued to upgrade our e-mail system to the point that network problems are not an issue. That means that excuses like "your server was down," become implausible. And we continue to invest in technology--even when it's already working.

Like all technology, e-mail is a substitute, not a replacement, for interaction. The reason 1-800-FLOWERS has invested so much money and time in technology tools is not so we can avoid talking with people and personally servicing our customers (not to mention our employees). Rather, our goal has been to create more time and opportunities for us to do even better.

While e-mail can be a great method to stay in touch or offer timely feedback (when you're not getting spammed by your own employees, that is), a fundamental part of my philosophy is that nothing beats a five-minute, face-to-face update. Nothing ever will. Not even getting cc'ed with the lunch menu.

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