Our recent experiences, and the results of an in-depth field study conducted at the University of Washington UrbanSim lab both show that today messages are a simple and effective way to improve small group collaboration.

What is a today message?

Today messages are short emails sent by each member of a small group to the entire group at the end of each workday. Today messages briefly summarize in a few bullet points the main activities that you engaged in that day. Today messages are informal in tone, and often include tidbits of personal information. People only send today messages on days they are actually working.

Heres a recent today message from a ONE/Northwest staff member:

From: Jon Stahl

Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 5:25 PM

To: ONENW Staff

Subject: today message - jon stahl   - 22 October 2003



  Today I:



    * Worked on WaterWatch of Oregon infrastructure plan

    * Phone call re: ONRC Database project

    * Phone call re: Social Justice Tech Assistance

      Providers gathering

    * Talked with Sam Moscheck about open-source stuff

    * Talked with Dogwood about printer problems

    * Interviewed Kerry about project tracker reporting

      requirements

    * Did some research on laptop purchasing for

      laurie kellogg.

    * Reviewed Bullitt outcomes with Gideon

    * Personal: heading out WTC annual dinner auction



  best,

  jon

  ---------------------------------------------------

  Jon Stahl -- ONE/Northwest

  Powering the Voice of the Northwest

  Environmental Movement

 

What are the benefits of sending today messages?

UW computer science researcher Dr. A.J. Bernheim Brush recently found that participants in her today messages study reported the following benefits from sending today messages for six weeks:

• 95% of today message users reported that today messages helped them be more aware of what their colleagues were doing.
• Three-quarters of today message users reported that today messages helped show the work theyve done and helped them see the broad range of their organizations activities. 59% of today message users reported that today messages increase their overall sense of involvement with the work of the organization.
• Two-thirds of today message users reported that today messages help them better coordinate their work with colleagues.
• 58% of today message users reported that today messages help them reduce or avoid spending time on status updates during in-person staff meetings.
• Today messages were perceived as an effective way to share small informational tidbits that might not merit a separate email. Because today messages can aggregate these information announcements, they can help reduce email overload.

Were not surprised by these positive results because they map very closely to our experiences using today messages over the past few months here at ONE/Northwest. Today messages use a familiar communication tool email in a simple yet surprisingly effective way. Because its so quick and easy to send and read short email messages, there is little logistical barrier to sending and reading today messages. Today messages are very unstructured, and thus very adaptable to a wide variety of types of activities.

If you work in small office like we do, at first you might think, Wait a minute! I sit right next to my colleagues all day long! I know what theyre doing! At first, we kind of thought that, too. But after using today messages for a while, and reading Dr. Brush's research results, were convinced that today messages are valuable even for small teams that work in close quarters.

Best practices for using today messages

Following are some best practices for using today messages drawn from both our experiences at ONE/Northwest and the field research of Dr. Brush:

• Send today messages with a standardized, information-rich subject line. This makes messages easy to filter and sort. At ONE/Northwest, our today message subject lines look like this: today message -- NAME of person-- TODAYS date
• Send today messages to a staff discussion email list. This makes it easy to centrally add or remove staff members, and to automatically maintain a central archive of messages. If you dont have a staff discussion list for your organization, ONE/Northwest can host a list for you. (More information on setting up an email list.)
• Today messages should cover events of potential significance to others, such as project milestones you completed, meetings you had, interesting documents you read, etc.
• Today messages should be short and casual. We generally keep ours to 5-7 bullet points of a sentence or two.
• Today messages are most effective when the groups leaders model good practices. Its also important to establish clear group expectations for the use of today messages.
• When appropriate, include hyperlinks to supporting documents or additional information. These can include documents on a shared fileserver, or outside websites. To link to a file on your file server, format your link like this: file://///nameofserver/directory/subdirectory/filename (yes, thats FIVE slashes). Sometimes you can just put in a hyperlink like this \\nameofserver\directory\subdirectory\filename.
  
  

Keep in mind

Today messages only work well for groups that have a high degree of trust. The fact that today messages are a self-reporting mechanism means that people can choose not to send messages or can choose to omit information they dont wish to share with the group.

Today messages work best for people whose work naturally breaks into relatively discrete tasks. People whose work consists mainly of reading and reflection tended to report that the daily granularity of today messages was a poor fit for their work patterns.

Conclusion

Today messages are a simple and effective way to boost collaboration and information sharing in small organizations. We strongly recommend that all small (3-10 person) Northwest conservation groups consider experimenting with today messages. We think youll be pleased with the results.

More information

'Today' Messages: Lightweight Support for Group Awareness and Coordination via Email byA.J. Bernheim Brush, Alan Borning, and David Socha

http://www.urbansim.org/papers/TodayDraft.pdf