Quote Originally Posted by Greyhawk View Post
If you really want to talk about a time-saving technological advancement that has quadrupled our workload and made ten things more difficult for every one simplified, let's discuss email. It's much easier now to make 10,000 people jump through hoops; the hoops themselves are unchanged.
I'd also argue that it prevents our generals from practicing "generalship." Before e-mail our bosses relied on briefs to gather their situational awareness and CONOPs/decision briefs on how to progress. It meant the staff were staff and doing the required work to ensure their boss was on the ball. Now my boss gets into work before light and goes home well after dark (often to log in remotely) and spends his days slaving over Outlook because everyone inside and outside is AOR sends him everything they think he should be clued into. It results in him making decisions and doing the staff work via outlook rather than through an informed staff process.

Some would argue that this is a good thing ... no staff to get in the road. I would counter that it means that the staff is continually playing catch-up or (even worse) finding other things to do to occupy its time.

If I was king for the day I'd disable every GO's e-mail account and let them get back to doing what they are getting paid for ... considering informed recommendations and making decisions.