Your Company Culture Sucks: The Carbon(Copy) Effect

Joe Simonovich
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read

Sometimes, in the pursuit of what we would consider to be a great company culture, we spend so much time focusing on large gestures on which we think positive company cultures are built, we miss the “little things” we do everyday that are actually culture killers. In this series, we’ll look at these small changes you can personally make to start improving your company’s culture immediately.

“In cultures with trust, people ask to be taken off all the emails. In cultures lacking trust, people ask to be included on every email.” — Simon Sinek

When I read this quote from one of my favorite people, Simon Sinek, it really resonated with me; it took me back to a text message I received following an email that was sent questioning why someone was added to the carbon copy line on an email.

When I received that text, I recalled just how many times I’ve lived through the story below. Now granted, most of the time I’m the person helping rationalize what’s going on from both people’s point of view, but am able to realize the major cultural impact nonetheless.

This simple, fewer-than-10-minute read will show you exactly why your emails are killing your company culture before you even type a word in the subject line.

I would be willing to wager that unless you have been at the top of the org chart since the advent of email, you can relate to something like this:

You get a frantic email in regard to a situation, and before you’re even able to start reading it and begin to dig-in to work on a resolution, you’re distracted by the other names in blue listed on the CC line. Before even having a chance to read what the issue is, you start trying to figure out — why is her boss copied on this? And mine? And the owner of the company?

This (no doubt) awful situation, which needed to be dealt with ‘ASAP’, has now taken backseat to three different letters — WTF?!?

The questioning sets in almost immediately; why is this person is copied on the message? Is it because they think if they don’t add multiple people to the message, you won’t pay attention to it the way you should if it were just the two of you? Is it because they think you can’t resolve it yourself, and need help from someone else? Is it because they think you don’t know how to do your job and they want to point it out to everyone? Or simply to ‘cover their [your] ass’ when shit hits the fan because you didn’t do your job.

Hmmm, not a lot of positives there.

But wait, it’s 4:45PM and there is something that needs to get dealt with ‘ASAP.’ It’s time to put those issues aside and solve a customer-related issue — that is what we’re here for anyway, isn’t it?

As you finally dig-in to figure out how to get to the best resolution (figuring out the why’s, how’s and who’s can wait until the AM, because you know the customer is all that matters right now), you’re interrupted by two new messages in your inbox, both replies to the thread.

You click each to read one was from one of those copied simply reminding you how important this particular customer is to the company, and the second wanting answers on how this could happen and who is being held accountable for this situation; how did we not know this IMPORTANT customer would be in this situation?

Frustration takes over; why were they on this message in the first place? Okay — you need to get up for a moment and walk around. You stop to tell your cube mate about the situation: not what’s going on with the customer, the situation with the emails (of course).

You finally get back to the email, first replying and acknowledging you know just how important this client is to the company, and then just to explain to the other that we’re first going to deal with the task at hand and uncover reasons and assign accountability tomorrow.

Now onto the original issue.

“Ping!” Interrupted by a text to make sure you’re still in the office and this is going to be handled today, the important customer needed to know it’s going to happen.

THAT’S IT!

You can’t take it anymore, of course everyone thinks they can do your job better than you. Everyone else could have solved this differently, and wants to tell you how you should have solved it; but wait, you never even got to what the issue was and now it’s 4:58PM. After all of this, if they think you’re working even a minute past five, they’re crazy.

You pull up the message and this is what it says:

Subject: Customer XYZ Not Happy, PLS HELP ASAP!!!

Jacob,

We sent Customer XYZ too many widgets again, and they are on tomorrow’s order again. If we don’t fix this, they’re going to find a new supplier who doesn’t make these mistakes.

Help!

You delete the widgets off tomorrow’s order, make a quick call to your warehouse to ensure they are aware of the situation, send the important customer an email letting them know they can give any excess widgets to their delivery person tomorrow and they will be issued a full refund; and if they’d like, you can set up a meeting with their account rep to discuss their widget usage.

Email sent. Computer logged off. Day over.

This issue that was the topic of so much discussion was resolved in two minutes — literally.

But now we have a potentially bigger problem. Since the day was over, all of those internal team members were left out of the final, one-to-one interaction with the customer. While, of course, this is nothing more than an oversight and in no possible way a spiteful reaction to all of the previous thoughts conjured up by the carbon copy tail on the original email thread, it leads to even more uneasiness amongst the team.

It’s sometimes hard to take a step back and look at something from the perspective of someone else. Sometimes there’s a legitimate reason to include someone in the carbon copy line of a message, but if you put just a minute of thought into why you’re doing it, and even more importantly, how it will be perceived by the person receiving the message, it will go a long way to improving your company culture.

At the end of the day, who doesn’t want a company culture built on trust and the mutual understanding that everyone on the team is totally capable of doing the job they’ve been hired to do, and are all working toward the same, shared goal.

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