May I suggest trying Slack? People behave very differently depending on the UX of the communication tool involved. Moving to a tool which reframes the implicit

May I suggest trying Slack? People behave very differently depending on the UX of the communication tool involved. Moving to a tool which reframes the implicit social contract of the conversation can do a lot to relieve problem points. Email supports large asynchronous messages with no global threading. Which means people are free to shoot off as many as they feel like, as often as they feel like, and each of those drops an anvil on your todo list. Refactoring that as a chat room with distinct threads only for distinct topics means that you can only talk for so long without realizing that you're tossing a big rambling mess in someone else's lap without digesting it first. It's also an "asynchronous realtime" conversation that you can pick up, step back from as needed (concentrating on code, phone call, support tickets, etc.) and search later if you need to. Seems simple, but very different UX, and tends to be more civilized as a result. Then use Trello or whatever on the side, for a communal view of persistent tasks & their progress. And email, but only when you actually NEED it, not for every damn intra-office conversation. Being more restrained about email helps, and is necessary anyway, but you can only get so far with that approach. The tool itself is feeding the problem, and while you can do a lot to train your team to have better email etiquette, it works better in the long run to meet the need with something that doesn't have the same structural issues.