Did anyone see this article in the FT on 9th April 2003. Needs registration to read. (Links given are www.agsm.unsw.edu.au/eajm/0209/michelson.html and michael.skapinker@ft.com ) Gossip and informal e-mail comms tell us more about the real state of a company than any formal management reports. So what’s new? Michael Skapinker points out that any attempt to formally harness the informal is doomed to kill the goose. See response to the earlier e-mail article from Hewlett-Packard, which recognised the real value in informal e-mail correspondence. Great, completely correct, 100% true, but totally useless ? (As the “Doc” used to remind us junior engineers. Useful = Better than true. True = Merely true, but useless.)