The arse-covering cc

When I worked in government, the unwritten rule was to copy the boss into everything. It was called transparency. It never felt like it. Mainly it felt like I was drowning people in emails they didn’t need to see and pushing email storage costs unnecessarily high.

A series of studies led by David De Cremer at Cambridge Judge Business School found that people who regularly see the boss copied into emails from colleagues feel less trusted, then assume the whole organisation runs on low trust.

We all knew what it really was. Arse-covering, so nobody could later say they hadn't been told.

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