A colleague recently forwarded me an email thread that reflected some confusion and complexity. The thread had gone back and forth several times and included 47 different people.
It was an occasion to apply my Email Rule of Threes heuristic: I consider it a “smell” when I see an email thread that is:
- more than three messages and/or
- more than three people on the thread.
It usually – but not always – means a problem of coherence and coupling. That is, there is lack of coherence and too much coupling. We want to aim for high coherence (having the quality of a unified whole) and low coupling (elements in a system are coupled when changes in one affect the other).
In my work as an organizational refactorer, I treat these smells like we would code smells: Look for refactoring opportunities. Might we decompose this effort by breaking down large, monolithic groups into smaller, more focused ones with clear responsibilities? What kinds of “tests” might we use to determine whether our new structure is yielding the same (or improved) decisions or actions? In the above scenario, did all 47 of those people need to be in on the thread? If so, why? And why did we have to use the back-and-forth of email to communicate — does the group not have clearly defined feedback loops or richer forums for making decisions?
It’s possible that the group actually did need all 47 people. But at the very least, I encourage you to use the Email Rule of Threes as an andon cord, a trigger to “stop the line” and ask the question: Might we want to find a better way of working here?
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