STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 25, 2000--Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) today released findings from its fourth annual workplace study on messaging practices -- "Messaging for Innovation: Building the Innovation Infrastructure Through Messaging Practices" --identifying powerful messaging techniques that help workers achieve maximum productivity. A major finding from the study, which reveals the role of messaging practices in creating the shared thought that drives innovation, shows that workers use messaging tools to both organize work and enhance thinking. Although messaging tools and practices depend largely on a person's individual work style, Pitney Bowes' study notes that there are common best practices that workers can draw from to accomplish this. The study also cites the emergence of self-messaging, previewing and knowledge indexing, both as major communications strategies and as significant contributors to messaging volume.

"The ability to drive or create innovation is a powerful attribute of successful personal brands. We learned last year that communications or messaging practice was the single most powerful common skill among highly successful people and now we know why. In addition to laying the infrastructure of the social networks that provide the raw material of innovation, we know that messaging tools also help individuals think," said Meredith Fischer, co-author of the study and vice president, Pitney Bowes Inc. "We anticipate that traditional corporate enterprises, Internet start-ups, small business owners and individuals who internalize these research findings can begin proactively fostering an environment in which innovation is more likely to happen, gaining competitive advantage in the New Economy."

Best Practices for Improving Workplace Productivity

How do workers stay organized and think at the same time? Concentrate brainpower for important tasks? Think about everything at once? Pitney Bowes' study reveals that the most productive workers use tools to organize their work and order or enhance their thinking. U.S. workers use an average of seven communication tools to accomplish this. While this study reveals that a common "tool kit" -- including telephone, e-mail, voicemail, postal mail, interoffice mail, fax and sticky notes -- is available to most workers, individuals adopt a personal set of messaging tools and strategies to help them manage their workflow and thinking. Although these strategies are highly idiosyncratic in nature, Pitney Bowes' study notes the most common best practices for improving workplace productivity:

-- Practice self messaging: Connect the personal self, office self and mobile self to reduce the sense of being overloaded or overwhelmed by sending e-mails and leaving voicemails for oneself. It is not uncommon for workers to write things down as they are commuting home from work or to leave themselves voicemail before going to bed. Some workers even develop their own language or shorthand to communicate with themselves in a brief, effective manner.

-- Engage in previewing: Anticipate questions, reactions, assemble needed materials, plan for unknown workload and make room for improvisational work. In fact, some workers say they tackle 20 percent of what they plan to do tomorrow before they can leave their desk at night. Others take a printout of their schedule home to plan how they will approach specific projects and how long each activity will take.

-- Learn knowledge indexing: "File" appropriate pieces of knowledge so they can be applied to specific problems or strategic objectives in a just-in-time way. Knowledge indexing, through a variety of messaging tools and features, and with the help of co-workers, enables individuals to stay on top of multiple projects and tasks by "pushing" the right information to their attention at the right time, with the appropriate notes and guidelines attached. Setting up project-specific e-mail folders, or tagging files by color or other marker are examples of knowledge indexing.

-- Outsource organizing: Use tools to manage your time and prompt action, allowing you to actively "forget" about the next part of a certain project until you need to think about it. Messaging tools often include audible reminders that beep, ping or ring alarms in programs such as Microsoft Outlook. Voicemail from other workers or even oneself also serve as reminders.

-- Outsource thinking: Rely on calendaring systems to set alarms and structure the order of thinking, e.g., signal that you should prepare for a specific activity two days prior, but let thinking float until then. Create folder systems to collect bits of related facts that you haven't had time to process. Use white boards to remind you of key priorities.

-- Eliminate "remembering stress": Use everything from electronic tools to sticky notes to enhance and extend your memory, allowing you to eliminate the "stress of remembering everything at once." Link projects with memory codes, e.g., colors or symbols that convey priority of an event. Highlight priorities on your to-do list or color code meetings in your electronic calendar.

-- Rely on humans: Don't underestimate the role of your co-workers and teammates to pass knowledge from one person or location to another and filter information to the right people to eliminate people having to deal with irrelevant data. For example, administrators have shared desk calendars in which others write organizing and coordinating information. This can include tasks for the administrator to do or information about workers' whereabouts.

-- Use active filtering, screening and prioritizing: These practices help workers avoid getting overwhelmed and losing touch with their important work. Using this strategy, workers divert unexpected requests, work tasks and information exchanges to known time slots or routines, avoiding unnecessary inefficiencies. For example, some people only hold appointments on certain days at predetermined times.

-- Be conscious of orientation: Tracking events, obligations and processes that are important to all of your constituents is essential to keeping track of where you are, where you are going and where you have been. You can do this by keeping either a simple paper list with items crossed off to using a sophisticated project database. In addition to effective work management, this practice is key when reporting progress to a superior or when bringing new team members up-to-speed.

"Top performers succeed by not thinking of everything at once. Instead they use tools and people to segment, prioritize and schedule thinking as well as tasks, actively forgetting about the next project phase until it becomes an A-level priority," Fischer said.

About the Study

"Messaging for Innovation: Building the Innovation Infrastructure Through Messaging Practices" builds on four years of trend data compiled and examined by Pitney Bowes. This is the first and only study of its kind to examine the complete desktop messaging environment of knowledge workers -- how they use messaging tools to impact their productivity and organizational value. The fourth in a series of studies on Managing Communication in the 21st Century Workplace, the 2000 study was commissioned in partnership with The Institute for the Future -- an independent, nonprofit research firm --and drew on ethnographic interviews or observational interviews, as well as extensive telephone surveys. The research was conducted between January and March 2000 and consisted of interviews with workers at all organizational levels in small, medium, large and Fortune 1000 companies in Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and United States.

For more than 30 years, the Institute for the Future, based in Silicon Valley, California, has forecasted critical technological, demographic and business trends to help clients plan successfully for their future, including major corporations throughout North America, Europe and Asia; government groups; and nonprofit organizations.

Pitney Bowes Inc. is a $4.4 billion global provider of informed mail and messaging management. It serves 118 countries through dealer and direct operations. For more information about the company, visit www.pitneybowes.com.

CONTACT: Cunningham Communication, Inc.

             Karen Fadden, (617) 494-8202
             kfadden@cunningham.com
                  or
             Pitney Bowes Inc.
             Sheryl Battles, (203) 351-6808
             battlesh@pb.com