The State Department suffered a recent embarrassment when it was disclosed that the main electronic communications system of the Department was nearly knocked out owing to what was, in effect, an internally originated denial of service attack. The root cause was traced to the practice of State Department employees selecting the “reply all” option to e-mail messages with very large distributions. This resulted in both an internal shutdown of sensitive electronic communications as well as needless abuse of the time of those who were copied on messages that they did not need to receive. We had addressed this topic, from the latter perspective, in both the earlier and current editions of Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Small Businesses (Wiley, second edition, 2008). The recommendation put forward in that book was to reduce the “info-stress” caused by bombarding employees with unnecessary communications. Use some discretion in targeting your oral and written communications and watch productivity soar.
But the State Department’s mishap is useful in that it reinforces a lesson about organizing your critical communications: this “reply all” practice interrupted critical communications in normal operations. Imagine how much worse the consequences would have been if the Department had been operating in a disaster recovery mode. That is another reason why you must streamline your communications. This incident was a nuisance to the State Department; it could be devastating to a small business, with far fewer resources to waste. And taking the State Department’s lesson one step further: be careful about how you store your e-mails online with file attachments, particularly when multiple parties within the company are copied on the same message. This redundancy puts an additional burden on your human and IT resources. Consider alternatives, such as the use of a wiki, instead. This will streamline your communications and reduce the risk of further disruptions.