David Tebbutt has written an excellent article for Information World Review: Ready for the rebirth of email? (I’m late on this, but then I’ve been on leave and deluged by emails…)
He’s so right. Email is too valuable a communications tool for it to be strangled by spam and thoughless overuse. I endorse his advice to outlaw group copying or ‘reply to all’.
Here’s a question. What proportion of your organisation’s emails are internal, and what proportion external? Freelancers have a perfect business model in that 100% of messages must be external. But for most middle managers in large organisations, internal messages represent, I suspect, the vast majority. It’s similar within a university, though if I define students as external on the grounds that they are equivalent to customers, I find to my pleasant surprise that 87% of my inbox is from external correspondents. Perhaps I’m simply quicker to delete my colleagues’ messages. What’s in your inbox?
PR Studies 
In my work with LearningChange, Richard, my e-mail inbox is constantly filled with internal e-mails.
Most of my work is not done directly with clients, so I don’t know how much help I will be, but I’m always being e-mailed from internal sources.
However, I think what is unique about my company is that we don’t have cubicles or offices. It’s a small company, so anytime any employees or other partners need to speak with someone, they can just yell across the office or walk over to his/her desk.
To me, I think that is invaluable in the workplace. Personal communication is just so much easier. And I like having unlimited access to all the partners in the company. It saves so much time in not having to write an e-mail or wait for a response.
What are you proposing as an alternative to internal email? More meetings? Phone? Stop communicating with coworkers?
Personally, I’d have an easier time giving up external email communications than internal.
I wasn’t suggesting anything in particular.
Every company is different.
Of course personal communication–face to face, real communication–is much easier and more effective than e-mail or telephone.
I don’t think you could give up any form, and certainly every workplace lends itself to a different type. Most use e-mail.
My company is lucky enough to allow personal communication (because of its small size) with all employees and partners.