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A Cautionary Tale: Watch the Email

Bob Sutton

Posted Jun. 30, 2008
Tagged: Work, OnTheJob, WorkTips

Originally posted on Work Matters.

Dr. Bruce Kone of the University of Florida was involved in a controversy this Spring about (allegedly) inappropriate inactions involving the admission of a student. There is a lot of finger-pointing going on in this story, but two facts are pretty clear. First, as part of the controversy, then Dean Kone sent a rather nasty email to several Florida administrators that led to a public apology on his part. Second, Dr. Kone was removed as Dean of the Medical School shortly thereafter.

It is unclear if Dr. Kone lost his job just because of the email, as there were a lot of other things going on (he did seem to have overly close personal connections to the student he admitted and there are some hints from the news stories that he was breeding a climate of fear at the school). But I confess that, for me, this story had special resonance as I think I am most prone toward becoming a temporary asshole on email, and have learned -- the hard way -- to keep censoring myself.

An IT guy I know showed me that he has his email set-up so that it takes a full five minutes for his email to go out after he hits "send." I think I will go in and set that up. Also, another part of this story we should all remember -- many, or perhaps most, of our employers can go back and read the emails we send.

Finally, alas, I don't find the nastiness here very surprising, as academia, and especially medicine have well-deserved reputations for being prone to asshole poisoning, and here we have both worlds at work -- although some doctors are fighting back admirably.

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, where he is Co-Director of the Center for Work & Technology, an active member of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and a cofounder of the new Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. He is also an IDEO Fellow. He studies the links between managerial knowledge and organizational action, innovation, and organizational performance, and has published over 100 articles in academic and applied publications.

Sutton is author of Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation (Free Press, 2002) and co-author (with Jeffrey Pfeffer) of both The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action (Harvard Business School Press, 2000) and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (Harvard Business School Press, 2006).

His newest book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t is highly acclaimed and published worldwide.

You can visit him at his blog Work Matters. See Bob Sutton's other posts and profile.

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