If the manager is a leader, the report (“reporting”, in Newspeak) is his instrument. Essential. This key to management appears everywhere, all the time. The employee who goes to lunch with the sales manager is credited with a “will you keep me informed?” by his manager. Friendly, unless it’s systematic. The salesperson fills out an exhaustive table of his back and forth discussions with his prospects. On the upper floor, we must read the reporting, sort it, classify it. “Discussing it” implies having read it: the teases submit false reports to challenge their boss and verify that he verifies! – Now who has never failed to read a report at night, because, during the day, there is so much to do? – Then in turn report to the level above, to the top of the reporting pyramid. Buried under this data, many employees would like to get out. Co-president of Mailoop and the Observatory of Infobesity and Digital Collaboration (OICN), Arthur Vinson reveals that every week, a manager receives 200 emails and responds to them in less than an hour in 51% of cases. You said reporting equals “infobesity”?
“Infobesity”: why copy the whole world?
“‘Infobesity’ (or information overload) refers to the situation in which a person finds themselves overwhelmed by an excessive amount of information, to the point that it becomes difficult to manage and process,” specifies the OICN. For its latest study, the observatory examined 58 million email metadata. It shows that 20,226 emails are lying dormant in managers’ mailboxes and that 56.3% of files stored in the cloud have not been opened in the last six months. Digital pollution to reassure yourself. But the reporting should consist of receiving emails with a view to subsequently processing them. Industrial quantity prevents this: 63% of email recipients are targeted “for action” (to), 31% are “for information” (CC) and 6% are “hidden” (CCI). The “reply to the whole world” umbrella is a digital antiphon: 15% of emails sent have more viewers (CC) than actors (to). And 30% of managers read less than 20% of the emails they receive. “Everyone develops individual survival strategies, and that’s no business! It’s time to question ourselves when there are more people in copy than in main,” underlines Arthur Vinson. In addition, the manager only has an hour of full concentration 11 times a week (deepwork), without sending an email. “This leads him to be in reaction. He can no longer be in creation or in reflection,” warns the expert, who recommends using tools adapted to instant conversation, deferred sending or clarify with the team the concept of urgency. Setting up protected periods, filtering emails and better sizing the team threshold are also avenues.
One question: what is it for (me)?
“There are two types of reporting, explains Vincent Binétruy, France director of the Top Employers Institute. THE reporting legal and the others, the operational ones, about which it is useful to question.” For the first, which concern corporate social responsibility (CSR) or accounting aspects, there is not much to do: they will continue to grow. For the latter, on the other hand, we can act by asking ourselves the right questions: what are they used for with such a frequent frequency? Manufacturing data to become a data factory is lucrative business of software merchants quick to sell a tool that sends a daily request in one click. Or 2, or 3, or 20… “In matrix organizations, with the two bosses, hierarchical and operational, we double.” But for what do? For sales and the entire supply chain, with an eye permanently focused on the competition, there is an interest. But it is too often a kind of insidious control, which allows some to justify their tasks and for others to validate them.
When the system goes crazy and is time-consuming for both the sender and the recipient, what should we do? “Change. But it has to start from the head,” insists Vincent Binétruy. “No, good people don’t like it when we follow a different route than them,” sang Brassens. However, these leaders must change their corporate culture. Doing otherwise requires a review of working methods. At the manager’s level, sort the reports, ask for them less often and oblige themselves to provide systematic feedback on all the data they have. Will ChatGPT save those who have to do reporting by doing it for them? Maybe. Unless it’s ChatGPT which answers them in real time!