1. Why email is addicted – explanation via behavioural sciences ( Mindhacks ) is spotted-on - with a minor glitch ( spotted by a commentator in Mindhacks blog): variable interval reinforcement [getting a reward from time to time, apparently random] only works well once the behaviour has been established. Initially you need to reinforce a new ( desired) behaviour every time if it is ‘new’. But, it doesn’t contaminate the argument since we are starting from the fact that using email ‘all the time’ is a well established behaviour in most of us!

2. ‘Programmers are not natural migration pathways for viral behaviours to spread’ . I am sympathetic with the spirit of your statement but you would be surprised how viral change does not distinguish between ‘types of behaviours’. Once started and with enough critical mass of people in ‘social copying mode’, the infection spreads no matter what. So, I don’t mind to have programmers in my client pool! Viral Change works regardless. Almost in any function/corporate tribe ( sales, marketing, IT…) you’ll find similar presumptions: individualistic-social-Darwinian-sales people are not good for collaboration or collaborative tools etc. I am proud to be associated to significant ‘cultural changes’ I am leading that were written off ( impossible, never, not in a million years, long….) at the beginning of the intervention. So, don’t despair.

3. The turning off of emails on Fridays. My experience is that isolated measures such as this one have limited impact if other variables are left untouched. This is by the way a measure that I often find in the context of grandiose ‘work-life’ balance schemes which, in my view, many of them, are fundamentally flawed. If the volume of work, distribution of labour and headcount etc doesn’t change, to ban emails on Fridays or over the week end is far from ‘helpful’ but a new straight jacket. However if the measure were taking in a broader context of behavioural change, it may just be useful as trigger of other behaviours. I say it may because my background in behavioural sciences tells me that it should be theoretically possible! But I haven’t seen it!.

4. In behavioural terms ‘banning’ is far weaker than promoting (reinforcing) an alternative . Here then I agree with you that if the measure is taken, for example, in the context of introducing bogs or collaborative tools then the potential value is higher. The real trick is to promote, reinforce, reward, ‘infect’ face to face conversations ( for example, when possible) or collaborative tools, MORE THAN make something forbidden –use of email on Fridays

5. The email-itis disease has got worse and worse since the infection of Blackberries across continents. Now, not only the worker/manager/executive is looking at his/her PC or laptop screen in the office for newly delivered emails but also when he /she is out (field, travelling) he can get anything ‘new’ in his Blackberry. This is the climax of the ‘always-on’ worker who is attached directly to the company server via wireless umbilical cord (I suppose I should trade mark ‘umbilicalberry’!) . It will take a lot of space to navigate through the serious philosophical implications of the 365/24/7 ‘always-on’ executive and I have referred to it in my book The Leader with Seven Faces. Space and time are assets that have become totally commoditised. We need measures to protect ourselves and other working with us/for us from the terminal commoditising syndrome. I am afraid it is a bit more complex than shutting down Outlook on Fridays. Leandro Herrero http://www.thechalfontproject.com