This is Manish from Udaipur

Didn’t you know: Emperor Nero received this email “Rome is burning, this is fyi.”

We watch news, read papers and listen to radio while driving and, do nothing more than participating in an adrenalin heavy – but largely inane – discussion on ‘current affairs’ at the friendly neighborhood paanwala (or equivalent, say, office water cooler or blogosphere). That’s how we handle fyi’s.  Be it global warming or spectrum allocation scam. Be it litter-on-road or office politics.

The corporate versions of fyi include ‘reports’. Typically thousands of them. As I learnt recently, a company identified some 5000 (and still counting) different reports being produced and circulated (communicated or consumed would not have been correct words) in their corporate head-quarters, and, on review, only 40 were deemed useful, that is ‘marked’ as useful by at-least one person. The fyi malaise is eminent when one looks into corporate emails.

Let’s say you receive some fyi email. It can only mean one of the following:

• I am not sure what can be done about this
• its not my job, maybe its one of the 17,000 recipients on this email
• my job is to inform you, I don’t care otherwise (the journalist)
• don’t bother doing anything about it
• aw, hot potato
• just wanted to ensure that I can save my ass using the shield of collective responsibility, or you are now partner-in-crime
• not sure, what can you do about this, uhh, wait a second, what do you do here?

There are variants of ‘fyi’, having the same import as above, like, “for necessary action” (what action, for what purpose) or, amazingly vague, “for needful” (I don’t have a freaking clue about this, so let me use this Raj-relic on you.) or “review and comment” (on the thousand page attachment).

The fyi-person has little inclination to think through or figure out. He has no intention to solve the problem, and so is loathe to articulate and argue. He is happy un-named and un-attached. He is content with cheap pleasures of cribbing and bitching. He is wary of pain of creation and is afraid of scrutiny.

A person with mission does not need fyi’s. He will figure out what’s needed and get it (maybe use RTI or Google or WikiLeaks or a fanciful business intelligence tool or not-so-fancy Excel). He will not bombard people around with vague requests (“needful”) or unsolicited updates (he will have results to show). He will ask specific person for specific help with a specific request. If he is unclear, he will build candidate clarifications and ask specifically if they stand scrutiny. (Aha, the scientific method!). He will differentiate between facts and opinions, and will have his own opinions. He will be his own beacon (atma deepo bhav – as a Sanskrit blessing goes.)

He gets (in an active sense) informed and he acts.

The bigotry of passive consumption of information is spreading, permeating and enveloping us all. I have little doubt that this is cause and symptom of institutional limbo.

Two simple steps:
     1.  Be the change
     2.  Be proud of it

The first step is actually self evident. Mahatma Gandhi famously said: Be the change you wish to see in the world. Of course, easier said than done. The hard part is not ‘being’ the change but to project the change we want in the world to ourselves. Its difficult because its easier to find fault with others, blame some ‘them’, and, as I learnt sometime back, we are hard wired for ‘agentism’. So there’s always somebody else (not us) who needs to change to make our world happier, better place.

It tolls for thee. Our predisposition to suspect this somebody as source of problems leads us to find solution there. So we take ourselves out of the change equation and, send for whom the bell tolls!

The second part is really a corollary. It asks us to revolt against the tyranny of common sense. (Thanks Sir Ken Robinson for this phrase.) I believe that we fundamentally are what we desire to be. We get trained, conditioned and constrained to be something else. These constraints, conditioning, and training form the norms, the status quo. These cause us to be apologetic as we attempt to do right (whatever we think to be right, that is). And, these make us to fool ourself into rationalizing our compliant activities. Maybe we loathe to change because it would be construed as stupid. But maybe there’s a larger constituency waiting to be converts, waiting for one to change and be proud of it.

We all are wired in some quirky ways. The wiring works well in a range of situations, but the complex dynamics of modern life throw a lot of situations where our such learnt reactions are not just non-optimal, they are damaging. The research suggest a negative agency bias—negative events are more often attributed to the influence of external agents than similarly positive and neutral events, independent of their subjective probability. (Morewedge, 2009) People generally appear to suspect that the causal origin of events is a prime mover—an intentional agent that initiates the first event in a causal chain of events (Rosset, 2008; Vinokur & Ajzen, 1982).

It is important to realize that we all are victims of this bias. Maybe this awareness can lead us to question the rationality and reasonability of our reactions – which mind so passionately insists to be so. Yes, our lives aren’t perfect, but we do not have to always find somebody to blame. But, we do and when we do the little accountant in our head increments the counter. Unknown to the person being blamed, the count just gets bigger and bigger. There are situations and there are reactions. Reactions which are function not of the situation but of the count. The little accountant has a viral way of keeping itself employed and grow its clan – the reaction triggers many more counters.

Hmm… so is this why the life is how it is? Or maybe the conspiracy theorists are right.

Yes, email is great. Its the most important invention after the wheel. But what happens when fools don’t stop and wont know how to put a full-stop.

Exasperated, as I am, I really cannot codify what (in my very humble opinion) are the email usage rules. Its like any other medium of expression: using email is an art and artists are rare.

While shabbily composed, heavily acronym’d emails can be considered a minor irritant, what would you say when such emails have been marked to seventeen and copied to seventeen thousand people. Would one even be able to say anything when someone does a ‘reply-all’ to this email. Loopy. Loony.

I can still think of two rules:

• Avoid sending emails. (Use phone, IM, blog or, even better,  just walk up to that person.) I believe use of email can only be justified if what you write makes an original contribution to the wellbeing of the mankind!
• If you have to hit ‘send’, send it to as few people as possible.

Email is not work. Sending an email does not mean completing a task. If an email has crossed your outbox, it doesn’t mean that responsibility has now been transferred to the seventeen thousands and seventeen other souls. And, if you measure your importance by number of emails you receive – you are certainly not important.