I love stories like these.

VentureBeat recently ran a great piece about Mejor Trato, a neat Mexican company that has junked e-mail, meetings, and managers. To say that the results are striking would be a vast understatement: Permanent four-day weeks.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Is Mejor Trato Unique?

Well, yes and no. I haven’t heard of many organizations that have adopted three-day weekends, never mind 86’d their managers. (With regard to the latter, Zappos is one of the few.)

On the other hand, MT is hardly the only company to realize the insanity of “collaborating” over a technology rooted in the paper corporate memo. Via three full-length case studies, I endeavored in Message Not Received to introduce actual companies that have embraced new, truly collaborative tools. I like to think that I succeeded, but make no mistake: Plenty of other organizations not profiled in the book get it—and more are coming on board every day.

Nothing is stopping you from slaying the e-mail dragon.

You may be thinking that eradicating e-mail would never work in your organization. Maybe you’re right. But what about significantly reducing its internal use? Not possible? Nonsense.

Simon Says

A point from the book bears repeating here: We love to blame technology (in this case, e-mail) because it can’t blame us back. Nothing is stopping you, your group, your department, your division, and/or your organization from experimenting with different alternatives. You’re only a Google search and a few clicks away.