Kasper Rorsted – E-Mail Can’t Replace Interaction, Says Henkel’s Chief – NYTimes.com

Q. You mentioned you’re doing less e-mail.

A. I think e-mail is very often disruptive in corporate cultures. You sit next to people and send e-mail to each other instead of walking over or making a call or just trying to look for the personal interaction. I use e-mail more and more as text messaging — just very, very short messages. It’s very efficient, but I am convinced that e-mail does not replace presence. Also, I never read cc e-mails.

Q. What do you mean by that?

A. When I see on an e-mail “cc Kasper,” I delete it. I don’t read it.

Q. Why?

A. Because it’s a waste of time. If they want to write to me, they can write to me. People often copy me to cover their back.

They need to deal with their business and I need to deal with my business. If it’s important, they need to write it to me, but I’m not going to read a cc e-mail. I’m not advocating against e-mail, but you can get into a great argument in e-mail because people can read whatever they want into the words. It takes two minutes to pick up the phone, so I try to encourage that as much as I can. It’s not either/or. I’m just saying you’ve got to get the balance right.

Interesting interview wit the Henkel CEO Kasper Rorsted and how he is using or not using E-Mail. My friend Luis Suarez will like it. I remember, that one of my bosses tried to ignore his cc – mails (not be to be mixed with the cc:mail product from good old times). He failed and started reading again e-mails, he was copied on. He missed to many things …

Kasper Rorsted is right: Presence meetings and going next door is important and we all should do it more often. And we should leverage new ways of sharing and collaborating. The share- and collaborate paradigm of Social Software shows the path to the Enterprise 2.0. But is this usable for the C-level, too? Or is social software only something for the „normal“ white collar (and perhaps blue collar) worker? What do you think?