White House Email Fail, Kosher Edition

photo by flickr user ~MVI~

White House staffers send daily schedules to reporters each day via email.

Apparently, the emails first make the rounds of various offices and staffers, who add or change wording, discuss the schedule, etc. When all that is done, somebody somewhere theoretically removes all the threading attached to the email and just sends the schedule.

But that didn’t happen on Wednesday. So reporters got their Thursday schedule, complete with comments from staffers about scheduling changes and a few complaints about invitations to the upcoming Passover Seder. Eight emails from White House personnel were attached to the thread — more than too much information for the reporters. Nothing tragic was revealed, except for the really bad collaboration practice.

If this is how you handle your communications, you should be very interested in Internal Notes.

It’s surprising this doesn’t happen more often. Think about the fails that could result, and how damaging they could be. Imagine what staffers might be saying about events, or even people, before those emails get sent out! Frankly, they were lucky this is the first time this has happened, and that the comments were innocent.

Do other organizations use this practice of passing emails around before sending them out? What would you do if your customers saw all your dialogue about them or your products?

Oh, and to top it off, the White House email had the wrong day in the subject line.

Double fail!