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I work in a large multinational company. My department is mix of around 60 young and experienced people. I joined around 3 years back.

I often feel that there is huge scope to improve managing the department affairs. It may be in selecting the right projects, estimating the timelines, activity plan, managing meetings, review mechanism and so on.

There is whole lot of material (from sources like Inc.com, HBR.org etc.) available on the web which can provide useful techniques to adopt.

On one hand I wonder how my colleagues will feel if I email out these articles? Will it have a positive impact on my colleagues and seniors in the department?

I remember last time when I shared one such article, my senior appreciated it, and even urged other youngsters to share such articles of general interest, but he also jokingly mentioned "Why do you have to point out the mistakes?"

Edit:

My intention of sharing is to stimulate the change, create debate on existing practices.

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  • I think you might want to clarify in the question what your intent is with sharing articles: is it just to explore ideas with colleagues or are you looking to stimulate specific changes? If the latter, the issue is far more complex than how to appropriately share articles.
    – teego1967
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 16:01
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    Fwiw I always end up deleting emails like this because they are usually noise I can't act on.
    – Andy
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 19:06
  • @user47410, unfortunately, forwarding articles or links isn't going to get you very far. There's A LOT more to stimulating change in organizations than sharing an idea, especially in large organizations which, by nature, resist change forcefully.
    – teego1967
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 19:16
  • This isn't sufficient for an answer, but I did this in the past at one company - but we had it in the form of a weekly training/meeting. The group was encouraged to share articles, which could then be discussed. It worked fairly well, all things considered. Better than random email spam anyways.
    – Telastyn
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 22:57
  • If you have a chance to do so, offer to instate a mailing list. People interested in it can join, the others won't be bothered.
    – skymningen
    Commented Jan 16, 2017 at 11:40

8 Answers 8

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Email comes and goes. In addition, you'll be lucky if you can locate anything that's currently in your Inbox two weks later. I suggest that you put up a wiki or a wordpress blog and put your stuff there.

If you host it yourself, it'll still be yours when you leave. If you're having it hosted by your company, then it's subject to company policies and you no affiliation with your stuff when you leave. If you get the company to host a company-wide blog or wiki for the benefit of all contributors to the blog or wiki, then it makes sense for the company to host it.

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Be careful and selective in what you distribute; this can become annoying unless most items are of interest to most recipients. For more than an occasional item, invite folks to opt in rather than sending unsolicited stuff they will just be annoyed by. As said elsewhere making this a personal blog or wiki may be better.

Also be aware that "found on the web" or "someone mailed it to me" do not excuse copyright violation. If you're going to do this, summarize in your own words and tell folks where they can go to read more; that's both kinder to your readers and makes the copyright someone else's problem.

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People can be weird about the sharing of external articles and blog postings in the workplace. As you've already seen, sharing an article can be interpreted as a critique about the way things are done. Depending on the context that could be perfectly OK, or it could be seen as someone trying to subvert decisions that have already been made.

I have found that it is best to share articles only between a very small group of highly trusted people as part of an ongoing discussion on a very specific topic. This way, you know the article will at least be skimmed, but more importantly you know who is reading it and what the scope of their reaction would be. Also, you can expect helpful and interesting dialog to occur in response.

Sending out a more general article from a place like HBR, to large group of people out of the blue is practically asking for mis-interpretation especially by more rigid/insecure folks who don't particularly enjoy circulation of knowledge. These people could very easily also make incorrect assumptions about your intent and silently retaliate in response at some point in the future.

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Your ultimate goal is to improve the way your department works. Were the problems addressed or any action taken after your last email? Let me explain how I see this based on the same experience in the past.

The point is whether you have a capable management team. If you have, you can raise issues and improvement ideas with your supervisor, they take the lead, set up an action plan and assign tasks to people thus changing the everyday working practices in the department.

An incapable management team will tell you to send emails if you like, so that people can read them. However no action is taken. What I saw happen in this case is that other people start thinking that those smart emails are a new kpi for a good evaluation and everybody will start sending all the stuff they read online. Your mailbox will be full of spam, no action will be taken and people get even more confused.

I suggest to address issues one by one in a measureable way with proper responsibility and action plan.

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It's encouraged in most places to share opinions and knowledge around subjects that are important to the team's growth. If you have already been commended to do so, then I would continue to share. I just would approach the body of the email when sharing the article in a way that is emphasizing growth rather than emphasizing mistakes.

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    I just wish you to share informative article and not add anything which points out to the mistake.
    – user26656
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 11:11
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If you are the team lead, or in a position of seniority and respect, emailing articles to the team should be fine. @VietnhiPhuvan's advice about a Wiki would work really well in this scenario.

If you are a junior on the team, or have not yet earned the respect of your team, a better approach might be to send the articles to your team lead and allow him/her to judge it's value to the team. Otherwise your emails will eventually become noise.

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I would be careful not to send too many emails. Sometimes this can turn against the person as it seems like they are always trying to educate someone.

More suitable option would be creating a "User Group" or a meeting where you present your ideas. This will also make it more personal and will create the opportunity to mingle with your co-workers. Sometimes you can find like-minded people that might be willing to present similar content in your next session.

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Personally I use Google+ for this: I created a circle for colleagues and post there only stuff I believe could be of interest for them. So if they like it, they can read, re-share, comment.

If they don't, it's not intrusive at all, they would see only when/if they log on Google+ (and for stuff you really want to make sure they see you can explicitly name the person or persons, in this ca

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