I was in a meeting last week and the small group of us realized that we had a question that someone else outside of our group could answer. The team leader suggested that he would email that individual after the meeting and let us know how he responded. As our meeting was in the same building–in fact the same floor– as the individual in question was housed, one of us suggested that perhaps the leader could just go knock on his door and ask while we were all there. A stunned silence filled the room. “I could,” he replied. And off he went. We chuckled after he left about what the reaction of that individual might be when the knock came at his door. If I were him, I probably would have been thinking “What the hell are you doing here? Answer a question? On the spot? To your face? Are you kidding me?” As bizarre as that sounds, it is becoming more and more commonplace in meetings that I’m in to do exactly what happened in the scenario described above. I believe we are becoming (if we’re not already there) averse to face-to-face interaction, and developing the same attitude to voice-to-voice interaction as well, because of our reliance on email to communicate. As a sample size of one, a quick comparison shows that in the last week, I received over 300 emails during the workweek, and about 60 phone calls during the same time period. I imagine the ratio is similar to the number of emails I wrote vs. calls I placed. It seems bad. It seems like we are becoming too isolated at work. But is it just that communication channels are morphing and this is just the result? 75 years ago, would someone have tracked similar stats for the increased number of telephone calls and decreased number of face-to-face visits in the workplace and proclaimed the death of communication in society? The rest of the story is that our fearless leader returned, having successfully cornered the individual, and secured a very non-answer to the question. So, we ultimately were no farther along than we were before, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Oh, and that individual is apparently going to email us when he has more information.