Reflections on the One-Year Anniversary of Message Not Received

On this day last year, Wiley published Message Not Received: Why Business Communication Is Broken and How to Fix It. I figured that it was a good time to reflect on the state of business communication.

As expected, e-mail remains (too) alive and well in many if not most business settings. On the positive side, though, some of the truly collaborate tools that I advocate using continue to grow. Exhibit A: Slack's impressive $2.8-billion-dollar valuation. I'm particularly impressed with the extent to which it is embracing platform thinking. Exhibit B: Atlassian's successful December 2015 initial public offering (IPO).

Sure, these companies are thriving not only because they make useful and popular products, but there's more to it. More and more organizations are questioning the sanity of allowing e-mail to rule their employees' lives. It doesn't surprise me as much when I hear of progressive companies that ban e-mail for internal use. Maybe my rule of three e-mails isn't so crazy after all?

On a different note, Message Not Received hasn't eliminated business jargon—not that that was a realistic goal. Still, plenty of others are joining the fight against ridiculous terminology. Josh Bernoff of the excellent blog Without Bullshit is a fellow comrade in arms. (Read my interview with him here.)