Email overload - a new way of telling stories

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 within that organisation. I often ask the question, 'How the hell did we
manage to communicate before Outlook and Googlemail ? Or put a man on the moon, or organise Live Aid? The fact is we did and, some would say, communicated a whole lot better in the process. Certainly we wasted far less time, and had less 'noise' to deal with.

So we need some help don't we? There are a few valiant attempts these around. One of the simplest is  Emailcharter.org is TED initiated. er... initiative which is great but I've maybe put a different take on it, from a storytellers point of view.

So, following are 30 additional tips which will reduce the time we all spend wrapped up in our email morasse and hopefully gives us more time for productive and creative thinking (and...work of course)

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 later 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 the 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 - from mission critical to, why am I actually
writing this at all?

9. Ask continually 'Why am I writing this at all'.

10. Write warmly, not like a robot, which is a bit jerky and boring.

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.

not ask the reader to download the whole of a 20 page PDF that you have to read through just to get to the one with one relevant paragraph, which 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 already be up to their eyeballs in their own
to-do’s. Virtually every email is a sales letter to get somebody to do something they were probably planning on doing 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 woman, or 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 or witty 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. Treat them as if they were your very best customer

24. 90% of emails are persuading somebody to do something. So be nice.

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.... and it is healthier.

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 that in less than a month in productivity for any
organisation of over 100 people - FACT! 50 % your employees time is spent
looking for information

30.Try using other technology. Twitter, SMS, anything that works;

If you don't know how then get a technology coach.

Good luck getting people to buy into this. Have fun and drop me line with any

other suggestions, stories or stuff that works for you.