14
The E-Mail Avalanche
The sales manager of an apparel company had more than 600 unopened e-mail messages in his in-box, ranging in age from a few hours to more than two weeks. The senior VP of a major technology company had more than 3,000 e-mail messages in his in-box, hundreds of which had not been read. The program manager for an aerospace company averaged 200 new messages a day. E-mail is a marvelous conceptual tool, but it has also become a nightmare on many levels, mainly in the visage of the exploding volume of messages and the phenomenon of out of sight, out of mind, that comes with a bursting, out-of-control in-box.
Here are a few questions for you to scan as you get ready to trek through your own version of the e-mail avalanche:
• How many messages do you have in your in-box right now?
• How many of those messages have you opened at least once?
• What do you do with the e-mail once you have read it?
• How much e-mail do you receive in an average day?
• How much of that e-mail do you actually need to see?
• How much e-mail do you receive with the infamous heading “FYI”?
• Have you sent a message to someone and are still waiting to hear back from the recipient?
• Has someone sent you a message and is waiting for your response in turn?
• How do you keep track of all the responses you are waiting for or need to send?
There are numerous challenges presented by e-mail, many of which require some kind of workaround or another. E-mail workarounds are made even more challenging by the fact that each person with whom you communicate electronically is likely to treat e-mail differently from how you treat it, and neither of you may know what the other considers appropriate.
Some people watch their in-boxes all day long and respond as soon as something shows up; some organizational cultures even seem to demand instant response. Other people are content to check their in-boxes once or twice a day. As hard as it may be to believe, some look at their e-mail only once or twice a week!
Many people allow their e-mail in-boxes to grow and grow, often reading a message, not being sure what to do with it, and calmly moving on to the next one. And if they’re not clear about what to do with that one, they will close it and open the next. At this rate, it’s not hard to clog up an in-box. If this sounds uncomfortably like your in-box, then you may be creating at least two levels of “stuckness”: one level impacting your own work, and another level impacting others ranging from team members and other parts of the organization to customers, suppliers, or other outside parties.
As is ever the case with workarounds, you may need to break the issues down into two broad categories: those caused by others and those caused by your own practices.
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Two corporations were codeveloping a highly technical product and were encountering serious delays. I was asked to take a look at how they were managing the joint development effort to see if I had any advice on what they could do to accelerate the process. Normally, I see organizations slowing each other down in disagreements about who should lead which part of the effort, who has the better design or testing process, who has better quality control, and so forth. I’m sure you have seen something like this yourself.
This time, I discovered two partners working in one of the more highly collaborative fashions I had ever seen. They shared everything. As in everything. If you have ever heard the cliché that a strength overused becomes a weakness, here was the poster child. Both teams had seen previous efforts run aground because information had not been freely shared with the other team. They had therefore agreed that they would not allow information blockades on this project. Whenever people had any kind of new information, they tended to share it with everyone via e-mail. That included everything from ordinary status updates and data from testing to design changes and quality deficiencies. Some people put everyone in the “To” line, while others put most people in the “Cc” line, further adding to the confusion about who was expected to respond. While admirable in its intent to maintain “transparency,” the practice summarily clogged just about everyone’s e-mail in-box.
Most team members wound up spending two to three hours a day reading e-mail messages from one another. As soon as I pointed this out to the joint project team, the leader bristled, complaining that I couldn’t have it both ways—it’s not fair to be scolded for sharing too much information while simultaneously being scolded for not sharing enough. Much of what moves around e-mail these days is generally classified as information. However, we all could probably benefit from a better definition of information if we are going to streamline the process of disseminating it. As soon as I helped the teams to redefine the term in a more useful manner, e-mail traffic dropped nearly 70 percent!
Workaround: Is It Really Information?
How could redefining information turn into a workaround? I will show you by using a method employed previously in this book. Information is a word made up of several words. As mentioned in Chapter 5 while discussing communication, any word with the suffix ation, as well as any variant that ends with tion or ion, generally means “requires action.” Quite a variety of words contain that suffix, and they indicate that action is required. If you combine inform with action, you produce a word that means something akin to “inform for action.” Information, then, should inform someone on some aspect of action required.
Now let’s return to the team members who were struggling with information overload. Each of them had been getting deluged with FYI kinds of messages, many of which were periodic updates that required no action whatsoever. General updates did need to be tracked and archived, but most people on the e-mail chain had no real need to be updated as frequently as they were.
I suggested that the team members reroute e-mail traffic by agreeing to file updates directly to their project database. However, someone wisely pointed out that buried inside some updates were specific actions that needed to be taken or requests for further information from one or more of the recipients. The team leader quickly got the point: if it’s just a general update, then it belongs in the update archive, to which everyone had access. If, however, the update also included a request for specific action, follow-up, or additional information, it needed to go to the specific individuals or subordinate teams with specific, clear requests for whatever action was needed.
Making that simple little differentiation trimmed large distribution lists down to small, relevant lists of recipients. The team eventually agreed that project updates would be generated on specific days of the week and would be placed directly into the archives. Someone who needed to read an update knew where to go and when in order to receive it. To better enable those involved to determine if the update needed to go to the archive or to a distribution list, I helped them compile a set of questions to ask themselves before hitting the Send button:
1. Who needs to know this?
2. Why do they need to know?
3. What action do we expect them to take?
4. Within what time parameters do we need the response?
5. Are there other contingencies that need to be considered?
6. Who else needs the output of the action?
That set of questions helped them cut down on traffic considerably.
Next, the team members worked to define protocols both for addressing e-mail and for replying. They agreed that if something required action from a person or team, those were the names that would go in the “To” field. As much as they liked the archive idea, they still wanted people to know that an update had been generated. That led to using the “Cc” line for people who might need to know but from whom no specific action was required. People soon learned that if they were in the “To” line, they needed to read carefully because an action or response was expected. Those in the “Cc” line knew they could simply skim and then delete; they were up to date.
However, people wrote updates in all kinds of ways; some were short and concise, and some were encyclopedic in their style and documentation. That made for some head scratching in determining what kind of action someone might need to take. With a little prodding from me, the team members looked into e-mail etiquette and arrived at a set of rules they would find useful. Between our internal discussions and some Internet surfing, the team leader settled on the protocols reproduced here, which were then distributed to the entire program team.
E-Mail Etiquette
Tired of spending too much time sifting through e-mail? Be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Take the time to digest the following advice and help make everyone’s day a little easier:
• Ask yourself, “Who really needs to see this?” More often than not, not everyone needs to know. Use “Cc” and Reply to All sparingly. When using Reply to All, remove all names no longer relevant to the e-mail.
• Before using Reply to All, scan the address list and the full content of the e-mail to ensure that something intended for specific individuals does not go to outside entities.
• When copying people (or using Reply to All), explain how the message pertains to each person. If several people need to see it, call out each recipient or group by assigning actions or providing information on why each was included. For example:
• Jack: Decision needed. Get marketing to approve the draft.
• Natalie: Please verify. Does the title capture our message?
• Ed, Frank, Willy: FYI. If we need a redesign, you might expect a delay.
• Ensure that the “Subject” line accurately names the topic. Minor topic changes should be made at the end of the title, for searchability. If a topic changes totally, change the title. This makes it easier for readers to scan their mailboxes and determine which messages are most important and what actions they have to take. (For example, instead of just “Deadline,” use “Action: Need your input by May 5.”)
• When forwarding long threads, give your reader context. Don’t force recipients to read through the whole chain to understand what action is required of them. Take time to edit the forwarded messages. Give them only what is relevant, and be clear on how it pertains.
• Keep messages succinct and to the point. If the subject requires more than what fits on a person’s screen (without scrolling), perhaps a conversation (by phone or face-to-face) would be a better method of conveying your message.
• Make action requests clear. Often, action requests require some explanation and background. That’s fine, but highlight what action is required of the recipient by placing it at the beginning. If the e-mail is addressed to more than one person, be explicit about who needs to do what.
• Ask yourself, “Is e-mail the best way to communicate this message?” If it’s to a single person, especially complex, especially sensitive, or time critical, using the phone or speaking face-to-face may be more effective and less time-consuming. We are colocated for a reason.
• Be prudent with your use of attachments. Be mindful of BlackBerry or other “smartphones” users and, if practical, both attach your file and paste its text into the body of the e-mail. Try to avoid sending attachments larger than 5 MB. Instead, post your file in an eRoom or other form of database and send a link.
• Limit the use of the “Important” flag to when it’s really necessary. This will preserve the effectiveness of this tool for when you really need the recipient to drop everything and take immediate action.
REDUCING THE FREQUENCY OF E-MAIL CHECKING
Tony Schwartz, author of a new bestseller, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, offers another piece of useful advice for managing both your e-mail and your time. He told me about working with one of his clients, a large consulting firm. Twelve- to 14- hour days were the norm, and e-mail played a large role in people’s working so long.
One young partner was virtually wedded to his e-mail program, constantly stopping what he was doing whenever the pinging alerted him that another new message had arrived. As a former associate partner at Andersen Consulting (Accenture), I know well the drill of overwhelming volumes of e-mail and the expectation of immediate response.
On Tony’s advice, the young partner moved from always-checking-instantly-replying mode to checking e-mail just twice a day, once at 10:15 A.M. and again at 2:30 P.M. Before switching to this schedule, he could hardly keep up with the volume. Afterward, he found he could get back to zero messages in his in-box twice a day. Part of the underlying rationale was that by turning his attention twice a day to his e-mail, he not only freed himself from constant interruptions but also was able to focus better when he was handling his messages.
However, before this approach could work, he had to reset expectations from his fellow partners and coworkers. He did so by letting everyone know his e-mail protocols and also told everyone that if something urgent arose, all the person had to do was ping him by cell phone, which he promised to answer no matter what. Nine months after instituting this practice, he had yet to receive one such urgent call!
One simple way to implement your own version of this switch is to include your new protocol as part of your signature line. Let people know your e-mail processing standards, and set specified response intervals. For example:
• I reply within 24 hours—let me know if you need a response more urgently.
• I read and reply to e-mail three times a day: 8:00 A.M., 1:00 P.M., and 4:00 P.M.
• If this requires an urgent response, please call my cell phone at 123-555-5555.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
You may be on the receiving end of 100 to 300 incoming messages that land on your screen each day. Furthermore, as well as being the recipient, you may be generating volume yourself. Often, volume grows because somebody sent a message to one person and then cc’d a dozen others. That can lead to a dozen or more Reply to All messages, ranging from something additive to versions of “Huh? Why am I getting this?”
Regardless of how many messages come in on any given day, many of us open messages, find we aren’t sure what to do, and simply move to the next one. That can turn an in-box into a memory device of some kind, under the assumption that as long as it’s in the in-box, it can be retrieved if necessary.
I suppose that’s true at one level, but an in-box is best utilized as a place for new messages, not items you have already seen. Here are three golden rules for handling an incoming message efficiently:
• Clarify what it is (information, action request, response request, etc.).
• Determine what action is required.
• Take the action now or have a means of tracking it for action later (to-do list, calendar, action folder, etc.).
In short, letting it stay buried in the in-box is not the best solution.
Depending on the screen dimensions, e-mail provider, and font size, you are likely to see 20 to 30 e-mail entries at any one time. That’s fine if you have no more than 20 to 30, but what happens if you have several hundred? Or more? Most people with hundreds or even thousands of e-mail messages stuffed in their in-boxes manage to work through only a couple of screens of messages a day, with the most recent arrivals on top. If something important lands in the in-box and you don’t have time to clarify what it is and what to do about it, it can easily keep dropping down the queue until “out of sight, out of mind” becomes the de facto reality of your system.
That can create significant risk, both to you and to others who may be depending on you for input, advice, action, or approval.
Workaround: Unclog Your In-Box
The most effective thing you can do if you suffer from a clogged, out-of-control in-box is to move everything that is older than a month over to an archive folder. You could label this folder “Didn’t Know What to Do” or anything you prefer. Just get those messages out of your in-box. A month is an arbitrary limit and should be adjusted to suit your situation. If something has been there for a month and someone really needed you to respond, the sender might well have sent you another message anyway. If the message is just for your reference, filing it in an archive folder will allow you to search for it if the need arises.
Now what do you do with the slightly smaller stack that’s left? One at a time, open the items and ask three simple questions: (1) What is this? (2) Is it actionable? (3) If so, what action is required? There are more sophisticated questions that can go into this process, but these three will get you going. If you can answer the first question, you should also have an idea about whether the message matters and why. If you can’t answer the first or second questions, you can either return the message to the sender and ask why it was sent to you or move it over to that archive folder.
If it is not actionable now, you should question why you need it. It could be reference material, data, or some other kind of information that you will need to access later. If this is the case, it goes in a reference folder if you may need it for supporting information later, or in a tickler file if you need to be reminded sometime downstream. If it’s not reference or for action later, it may just be something that can be deleted.
If it is actionable, then you are down to three choices:
• Do it now. Best practice suggests that if you can do whatever it is in two minutes or less, there likely isn’t anything better, faster, or more efficient that you could do, so just do it!
• Delegate it. If it needs to be done, and it requires more than two minutes, ask yourself if the task requires you personally to act or if you could delegate it to someone. If you can delegate it, then forward the message right now along with instructions about what you want to be done and when.
• Defer it. It could be that you need to do it yourself but not right now. If that’s the case, you can add it to one of two basic reminder locations: your task or to-do list or a calendar page. Once you have it stored in a system that will remind you that it needs action, you can do one of three things with the e-mail. You could either delete it, file it in an “Action Required” folder with a cross-reference to your task or to-do list, or save it in a reference folder if you think you may need to access it later.
By plowing through your in-box in this manner, you have much to gain:
• You should get a whole lot of things unstuck and moving again.
• You may catch a few things that were in danger of erupting into one of those fires and crises we discussed in Chapter 11.
• You will get current and back in control!
Once you have cleaned up your in-box in this fashion, all you need to do is process incoming e-mail once or twice a day, following the same basic protocol, and you will be able to stay current and in control. Worst case, make this process part of your weekly review as also outlined in Chapter 11, so that when you leave on Friday, your in-box is back to zero. That doesn’t mean everyone else will be current and in control; however, you will be. If you recall the control-influence-respond model from the first chapter, you may now be in an ideal position to influence others and help guide them on the way to getting current and in control as well.
TEACHING OTHERS E-MAIL EFFICIENCY
If you were to Google “e-mail etiquette” today, you would find 46,300,000 entries. I guess e-mail behavior is a hot button that more than a few have noticed. Plenty of dos and don’ts probably come to mind when you think about e-mail etiquette, including such standbys as don’t shout in ALL CAPS, don’t forward hoaxes, restrict your jokes to your close friends, and keep your antivirus program up to date. Taking a broader look, what you really need is to help others gain some efficiency themselves. Drains on efficiency commonly occur because of one or more of the following:
• Lack of clarity about what the sender wants or needs
• Lack of clarity on the recipient’s part about what action to take
• FYI messages with no inform-for-action in them
• Reply to All
• Conflation of the “To” and “Cc” lines
• Out of sight, out of mind
• Lack of context for timeliness—when is the response or action needed?
You might have cleaned up your e-mail in-box and adopted sensible, efficient practices on your side of the equation, but what can you do if others aren’t quite up to the same standards? Besides leveraging the ideas mentioned earlier, here are a few tips that you may need to employ. There’s no question that to make these work, you will have to engage in even more steps, but the extra effort may prove worthwhile if it really matters that you receive timely responses.
First and foremost, the game involves making it easy on the other guy. The basics are still in play: be sure that the “Subject” line tells recipients what you want, and start each message with a clear explanation of purpose, action requested, and appropriate supporting information, which Sally McGhee advises in her book Take Back Your Life. Sally also offers advice on how you use the “Subject” line to help. I have combined some of her recommendations with others I have found valuable.
Use the “Subject” line for clarity on what you are asking the recipient to do. You may want to develop a shorthand that you can use first within your own group, perhaps eventually migrating to others in the organization. Here’s an example:
AR: Action required—recipient needs to do something specific
RR: Response required—you need the recipient’s input, point of view, permission, or the like
RO: Read only
BD: Briefing document enclosed for meeting on [date]
SU: Status update
FYI: And it better be something the person needs to know!
EOM: End of message
Use the “To” line for people who need to act on the message.
Use the “Cc” line for people who need to know about the action but do not have to take action themselves.
Never reply to all—reply only to those who need to know what you are writing about or need to act on the content of your message.
Always change the “Subject” line to reflect what you’re doing. For example:
Confirming receipt of Project X update message
Confirming appointment request
Taking action on Project Y per your request
Need more information regarding Project Z
From there, you may need to take a few extra steps to make certain the message is actually read and appropriate action is taken. For example, if you know that the other person is habitually slow in getting around to messages, for whatever the reason, then consider one or more of the following:
• Leave a voice message letting the person know the e-mail is there, what it’s about, what you need, and by when.
• Leave a text message letting the person know the e-mail is there, what it’s about, what you need, and by when.
• Knock on the person’s door or cube and let him or her know you sent an e-mail requiring response or action.
• Print the e-mail and leave it on the person’s chair.
To help you keep track of what you are waiting for, try the following:
• Send a copy of the e-mail to yourself and track it on a Waiting for Reply list or in an e-mail folder.
• Send a copy to yourself and enter it on your calendar for follow-up.
• Review your Waiting for Reply list or e-mail folder at least once a week, and follow up with the person if you haven’t heard back. Make this part of your weekly review.
If you want to work around the e-mail avalanche, then you will need to cover two different areas. In a nutshell, the solution to the e-mail avalanche is one part self-workaround and one part system or other people workarounds.
The overall message here is that you have a lot to do in your job and precious little time to do it. The more you can cut down on e-mail traffic, the better off you will be. Eliminating the need to keep rereading messages stored in your in-box will enhance your ability to get work done.
WORKAROUND QUESTIONS
Here are some workaround questions to help you dispatch snowbanks of e-mail:
1. Do you have any messages stored in your in-box that are simply there as reminders of work you need to perform? If so, move those reminders to a task list and either delete the e-mail message or store it in a reference folder on your system.
2. Do you have any messages for which you are unclear about the action required? If so, consult with the originator about the intended purpose, desired outcome, and required action.
3. Do you have a clearly established response protocol so people know when to expect replies from you? If not, consider establishing something, and include it in your signature line.
4. Does your team, work group, or department have its own e-mail protocols? If not, consider using tips provided in this chapter to spark a discussion on the subject so you can arrive at something that will help everyone. Be sure to cover some basics:
• What constitutes information? Do updates belong in e-mail, or is there a better system for circulating and storing them?
• How will everybody involved flag specific action requests in e-mail messages?
• What standards should be adopted regarding expected replies?
• When is Reply to All appropriate?
• What is the difference in being named in the “To” line versus the “Cc” line? What expectations apply to which line regarding what the recipient should do?
5. Are you frequently copied on e-mail messages that do not apply to you? If so, either or both of the following actions could bring relief:
• Reply to anyone sending you these messages with a request that you be taken off future e-mail strings unless specific action is being requested of you.
• Send the originator a suggested protocol for how to address messages to distinguish between general information and specific requests for action.