half of the e-mail they receive is unnecessary. Almost two-thirds
delete e-mails without reading them.
In just one week without e-mail, the majority of managers would
pick up five to ten hours per week. The time could be used for faceto-
face meetings with employees and customers; it could be used to
call someone. The extra time could even be used for just thinking. Any
critical issue you missed in an e-mail will be brought to your attention.
You can be sure that if it’s that important, you’ll hear about it.
Managers need a break, and there aren’t many places to find one.
After your week away from e-mail, don’t go back and read all of it;
you’ll never catch up. Just start fresh with e-mail that arrives the
day you start using it again.
Company Longevity
Another aspect of remaining flexible has to do with your personal
career track. Already facing earning pressures and increasingly
demanding customers, executives and managers face another potentially
more serious issue on the horizon: the longevity of key personnel.
The amount of time executives and managers plan to stay
with their organizations is changing, with the majority now planning
to stay years rather than decades:
• When asked how long they expected to remain at an
organization five to ten years ago, almost half say they would
have planned to stay more than ten years, with nearly half of
those saying they expected to stay twenty or more years.
• Today, only one-fourth of those same executives and
managers say they expect to stay with the same organization
for more than ten years.
• Another 16 percent place their tenure at work in the two- to
three-year range, a time frame hardly considered several years
ago.