Love it or curse it, email provides either the super-lubricating oil or the over boiled jam in the gears of any organisation, depending on the skill of the writers and the culture of the organisation. How the hell did we manage to communicate before Outlook, or put a man on the moon, or organise Live Aid? The fact is we did and, some would say, communicate a whole lot better in the process. Certainly we wasted far less time, and had less 'noise' to deal with.
Following are 30 tips which will reduce the time we all spend wrapped up in our mail mess and hopefully gives us more time for productive and creative thinking and... er...work:
Email tips
1. Use subject lines and titles that mean something, precisely. It gives people a clue about what they have to do with it. And helps retrieving information from the fossil record of their in-box at some late date.
2. Switch off email incoming warnings. There is nothing that important that can't wait an hour or so. If it is mission critical then use telephone! They still work.
3. If you really have to write a long email put a 'contents' at the top and tell people what’s in the rest. And what they need to do, if anything.If nothing then tell them that too.
4. Think! Do I have another way of distributing this information; Intranet, Blog, or bless us, by getting off our behinds and walking over to the individual or using the phone. Word of mouth - that works too.
5. One sentence paragraphs are fine, absolutely.
6. Use Headings.
7. Use Bullet points.
8. Put the main information you want to convey at the top of the message. And work down in descending importance - Mission critical to, why am I actually writing this at all?
9. Ask continually 'Why am I writing this at all'.
11. Bring your personality to work.
12. Remember the Three Tee’s
Clarity - Brevity - Personality.
13. Make sure the links you may put in actually work.
14. Don’t attach whole documents, just paste the relevant bits into the message. A 20 page PDF that you have to read through just to get to the with one relevant paragraph is worse than useless?
15. Use the spill chacker.
16. Don’t use texteese unless it’s for a colleague (you actually know)
17. Don’t send ‘thank you’ replies.
18. Don’t abuse the priority buttons.
19. One subject per email… or find another way of doing it.
20. Always bear in mind that you are, in general, asking somebody to put your email on their to-do list and they may be up to their eyeballs in their own to-do’s. Virtually every email is a sales letter to get somebody to do something, even if it is just to read the damn thing.
21. Wait 5 hours before replying to emails that wrankle. DO NOT hit the reply button immediately. Email is the fastest way to unintentionally upset people known to man. 80% of communication is non-verbal and it is very easy not to see or appreciate the smile or irony behind the phrase somebody may think was very clever when they wrote it. And if they are being a bit tart,.......... then a short pause helps everyone to cool down a bit.
22. If you can’t reply fully immediately tell them when you can and then do it. Under promise over deliver.
23. Your colleague is a customer too. Teatr them as if they were your best customer.
24. 90% of emails are persuading somebody to do something.
25. 80 % of emails travel less than 50 meters. Why not get off your ...... and go to see them and have a chat. Guess what? That works too. Probably better and it certainly helps for the next time you need some help.
26. Emails are not 'buck passers' or 'insurance policies'.
27. Think, before you CC, do the c-ceed really, really need to see this.
28. Use CC only when absolutely necessary. If they aren’t the prime recipient why are you CC’ing them at all?
29. Use the Intranet more. If you can’t, then fix it quickly. Spending £50K on a great intranet will save at least in less than a month in productivity for any organisation of over 100 people - FACT!
30. Try using other technology. Twitter, SMS, anything that works; If you don't know how then get a technology coach
Communication is the fuel for innovation - it shouldn't be the brake
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