“I just don’t have time to see clients, do paperwork AND answer email”.
Behavioral health professionals are constantly juggling aspects of the work environment that were never presented in graduate school. Helping people is we got into this business. Managing records and funders takes up an awful lot of time. And then there is the organization to cope with.
Technology is good-until it gets out of control. Email is supposed to make us more productive and save paper. Turns out that it does do much of either one. Some studies have more paper being used–hitting the print button is just too easy.
Email is easy to send. That is part of the problem. Stever Robbins, in an article in the Harvard Business School newsletter Working Knowledge considers this the problem of the email reader–and thus their responsibility to solve.
He says this is by default as the sender really has little investment in what they send–it costs nothing but a few seconds to send a half-formed reaction to an entire organization that won’t know what to do with it. So the receiver must train those who are sending, to the greatest extent possible, and use the delete key as necessary.
Email is communication. There is a sending function and a receiving function. We must work on both sides to be effective inbox managers. Effective email is relationship building. Good relationships are built on trust. In this case, readers want to trust senders to not waste their time.
In the following article I will provide some guidelines for taming your inbox and getting back some precious time–as well as beginning to train people how you use email. While not intended to make you an expert, this post will lay out some ways to make the most of your email experience.
Communication:
Communication is a process. It requires at least two parties: sender & receiver. In normal face-to-face conversation, and to a lesser degree by phone, there are a number of clues to the greater message being sent to the receiver. When the receiver respond with an accurate interpretation of the sender’s message there is communication.
However, in some forms of communication there can be a lag between sender sending and receiver receiving. Leaving a recorded voice message is a good example. Many people “hate” talking to answering machines because there are no verbal cues the message is received.
Email is similar to leaving a voicemail. The written message can be tricky to compose so that the reader “gets it”. Tone, grammar, readability can all affect the received message. They are the body language of the written word.
RECEIVING:
Tame your inbox:
The first task is to evaluate the value of email. Divide your annual salary by 120,000 to get the per/minute cost of your email activities (Robbins). Gives a striking idea of the price of wasted time and changes the meaning of prioritizing.
Faced with a stack of email what options are available?
Use a paper "response list" to triage messages before you do any follow-up. This will help prioritize and give some time for first consideration about appropriate response.
Clean out your inbox before going home on Friday. There is nothing more discouraging than opening your office on Monday morning and being further behind than when you last went home.
Try an adaption of an paper organizational tool. Using files set up specifically for sorting, decide quickly what to do with the message: take immediate action on the item, file for reference, file for follow-up, or delete it.
Check e-mail at defined times each day, setting up an un-interruptible space–sometimes an “open door policy” will kill you with interruptions. Every interruption means it will take more than 5 minutes to get back where you were working.
Answering email in bunches is a good idea–this is a corollary to only checking email inbox at one or three set times during the day.
Give yourself permission to ignore irrelevant or no action required messages. Anything you delete is something less to worry with. Relevancy is determined by trust in the from address and interest in the subject line.
Filters:
Filters are one software trick that can help you get more control of your inbox. Filters are sets of rules, that you determine, designed to give you–the user–greater control and decreased frustration.
Most email software can be set to sort your incoming email. You create rules based on your needs. Simple rules are best–the more complex the rule, the better the organization, and the more work it is to read everything–increasing the chance of missing the best joke ever forwarded.
When your internet service provider or corporate firewall attempts to block spam, filters are being used. As we all know this can make friendly messages disappear suddenly and spam appear in its place. If you suddenly stop getting messages from a trusted source notify your system administrator so they can whitelist those addresses. Just delete spam, opening it or replying only tells the sender they found a good address–further clogging up bandwidth.
Imail users can set filter rules by using the “My Filters” preferences (in the drop-down menu). Filters can be set in Hotmail by following the options link and setting criteria. Thunderbird and Outlook Express are similarly easy to set up. In my experience, Outlook Express does excel over Thunderbird in this category. I don’t have enough experience with web-based email systems (Gmail, Yahoo) to comment on them.
Incidentally, always use a good updated anti-virus product. Norton and Microsoft now block some of the malware attracted to casual internet users and keep themselves routinely updated. There are some decent free products out there; and some bad ones masquerading as virus scanners, so be careful.
Another technological issue worth remembering is that email is not private. Most organizations keep records of every email moving through their system–thus, while it may be possible to find that lost email, it is likely that the joke about your boss or the plans to seduce his secretary could easily become public knowledge. Whenever I listen to a news story about corporate or government mis-deeds there are references to email archives detailing embarrassing comments. Also, emails are easily sent to the wrong person(s) inadvertently.
SENDING A NEW MESSAGE:
In the process of considering what message to send and who to send it to, an overarching question becomes “what do I want from this message?”. Then let readers know right up front what your expectation is. Does someone really need to read your email? If not, leave them off the distribution list. It is a compliment that they can easily return.
When scheduling a call or conference, include the topic in the invitation. It helps people prioritize and manage their calendar more effectively.
It pays to consider the style of your reader. They may not prefer email, or they may only answer during specific times–maybe days after you send it. A variety of response times is expected. If your message is time-sensitive, state that somewhere. Consider your own deadlines and be aware of them. If the person you are trying to reach is easier to call–do so. If the information is time-critical--use the phone.
Use an effective writing style:
Writing intimidates people–they think they can not do it well. That childhood teacher that expected Hemingway from 4th grade essayists ruined many emerging writers. There are some guidelines to make your experience more comfortable. Find a good dictionary or business writing book at a local flea market–shabby chic emailing anyone?
Personal style will come through. Its something we have to discover in ourselves by paying attention to our everyday writing and speaking. If you are casual and funny in person, you will be casual and funny as a writer. If you are formal in conversation, expect to be formal as a writer. Just sit back and have fun. It is important to remember that tone does not always come out as intended & that humor may not translate well to the reader.
I like formality mixed into a casual presentation. But, I found that my emails were stiff and uninteresting. Sort of like reading legal-ese. Much of my work does have a formal legalistic side, but my reading material is off-putting in its stiffness. Who says that formal must be stuffy. So, I am learning to change my tone and word choice to give readers a less dry--more wet? –experience.
Be concise. In email writing brief and pointed are good. Like writing an effective memo, business email has little place for thinking while writing. This means following the old journalistic saw of 5 W’s and an H. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.
Clearly state action requests. If you want things to get done, say so. Summarize action items at the end of a message so everyone can read them at one glance.
Use an eye-easy presentation:
Effective email has a presentation aspect–a visual experience.
Here are some quick tips:
• White space is a reader aid;
• Use less than a page;
• Lines under seventy-five characters long;
• Messages under twenty-five lines long;
• links may not display correctly or work correctly so use them sparingly;
• no pictures–text only–backgrounds are pictures;
• Use a readable, universal font–font style is a matter of personal preference, as most email clients can display most fonts, but that fancy font you bought is only resident on your computer and will not be displayed correctly on the reader’s machine. Also color can make a message hard to read. Black type on white background is still the best.
By putting your major points in the first two paragraphs you insure that most people will read at least that far. This can be especially effective when attaching documents. Presenting an abstract of the attachment early on helps readers decide what to do with that attachment–especially if it comes in an unreadable format.
Edit. Edit. Edit:
A mark of fine craftsmanship is that it looks easy and natural. Implying that it is anything but.
There is the extra long paragraphs habit–closely aligned with the run-on sentence and the rambling non-thought. Re-read your message before sending it. A good way of assessing how the reader may receive your post is to read it out loud before sending. Sometimes send a draft to yourself (checking later in the day) will also help with taking care to not sound stupid or offensive–though this may happen anyway, we can easily reduce tooth marks on our feet.
Effective email has been edited–before sending. A benefit of this is that you have to choose what to reply to–increasing the relevancy of the topic discussed. You also consciously control the timing of the conversation by controlling the timing of your reply. Some email clients also let you delay the send time of your message–send it later, control the tempo. If a conversation is so important it needs to be handled that quickly use the telephone or talk face-to-face.
Editing also has the extra benefit of giving you a chance to be concise & ask the question you really want an answer to. It can help to send a copy to yourself–to be re-read at a future email session. BY slowing down the whole process, messages become more relevant and less reactionary.
Editing for style and standard English conventions also helps insure readability. Consider the confusion created by run-on sentences, pronouns not attached to an identified subject, dangling modifiers, and other faux pas. One rule your high school grammar teacher will have to get over is the sentence fragment. Sentence fragments and bulleted points are very useful in email. They have the added bonuses of creating whitespace and increasing scan-ability.
There is an entire social movement dedicated to “slow”. Not such a bad idea.
The Subject line:
The subject line should be created after your message is prepared. That way you are able to make it most relevant and increase the chances of being read. I don’t know about you; BUT, every email I send is important.
Readers look at the subject line and the from address to determine relevancy. This is your “brand”. Branding is all about building a trust-based relationship.
There is a surprising amount of literature is available on writing subject lines. Most of the pundits write for marketing campaigns–which is not relevant here.
A few tips to consider are:
• Use subjects to preview your message:
• Use a subject line to summarize, not describe.
• Give your reader the full context at the start of your message.
• Treat the subject line like a newspaper headline
• Consider your “brand” and be consistent in your style. This will build trust & teach readers what to expect from your message. People read messages based upon a combination or from address, subject line, and expectation of content.
• In general, subject lines with less than 50 characters are better read and accepted than longer subject lines.
REPLYING TO A MESSAGE:
Before replying to email:
Replying to email invokes the second part of communication–responding with your interpretation of what you read. All the same guidelines apply as if this were a new thread. There are a few special considerations.
Robbins suggests an innovative technique to triage your responses: use pencil and paper to make a list of who has sent what and what response may be required. This is particularly useful when there are multiple messages with overlapping subjects from the same sender.
The wisdom of this tip came home the other day. After working on a report, I sent a draft out for responses. After making some adjustments, I re-sent the report. Turns out that the first draft was forwarded to a funder as complete–after I forwarded the revised draft.
It also came clear after someone forwarded my own message to me–directly. I had copied them on a project because of courtesy & they sent it back wanting to know what I thought. That was weird.
If you bcc (blind carbon copy) someone "just to be safe," think again. Ask yourself what you want the "copied" person to know, and send a separate message if needed. Yes, it's more work for you, but if we all do it, it's less overload. It can be helpful to both of you to ask what supervisors want to be copied on–might even save some time for more interesting projects.
It never hurts to say things again. “If you want things to get done, say so. Clearly. There's nothing more frustrating as a reader than getting copied on an e-mail and finding out three weeks later that someone expected you to pick up the project and run with it. Summarize action items at the end of a message so everyone can read them at one glance” (Robbins).
If there are multiple topics to respond to break them up into separate emails. Each thread can live its own independent life. Conversely, if there are a hundred loose ends to tie up, put them to rest in a single reply or phone call. Saves everybody time and energy–and its nice to talk sometimes.
It is a good thing to reply to someone. Even better is when all the long list of attached previous messages is deleted. But, by just answering there is often lost context & this can lead to numerous “what?” moments. Some workarounds for this dilemma include writing your reply in contextual sentences, thinking about what the sender is saying & replying to the unspoken questions.
An example of this came up the other day when a co-worker asked me to edit an email response she was crafting. It seems that she had received a message from someone who was complaining about a change in the system. The sender was communicating multiple things; 1) the system is changing and 2) she is really bothered by it. Two responses could be made: 1) yes the system is changing and 2) yes she is upset about it. Effective response requires answering both concerns.
Not every email requires an answer. Training email senders to only send what is relevant is helpful. Going hand-in-hand here is considering who really needs to know what about your projects, and what it is they may want to read
FORWARDING:
Forwarding email indiscriminately is a practice that can get out of hand easily. Consider all those “fuzzies” floating around cyberspace waiting to get sent to your entire address list–I’ve yet to see a clean copy of any. Sometimes the message is locked inside like a Russian nesting doll. Then, when they do see daylight there are so many addresses of people from around the world and editing marks I can’t read the thing anyway.
Edit before sending:
Before forwarding email to anyone consider what they will use the information for–this will help you manage projects and cut out extraneous chatter. It will also force you to identify what you want from your reader. By answering these questions in a summary heading to the forwarded message you will announce to your readers the value you place on the relationship.
Another way to add value to the emotional bank accounts that measure relationships is to re-create the message to be forwarded. In that way there is enough context so that your reader can get right to the core, minimizing irrelevant preludes.
Conclusion:
So, what is there to learn about effective inbox management? Well, first it may be important to understand that email is a mode of communication. 2nd, technology can help solve the problems it has caused.
Your email machine itself can help through the use of filters and sub-folders. These are easy to set up, usually through the options or preferences menu. Check with your system administrator or help menu for more detailed information. Internet forums for specific technical questions exist on virtually every software program.
Communication requires work on both sides–sender & receiver. If email is to be useful there must be communication.
Business email communication is a form of memo. Memos are brief letters usually highlighting bullet points. Writing email in easy to scan formats increases the likelihood that it will be read. BY adding action items to your messages there is an increased chance that you will get the desired response.
The key idea in sending only what is relevant. To determine personal relevance readers look at the subject line and the from address. In marketing terms this is your “brand”. The more trust readers have in that brand the better the chances of communication.
To enhance your brand a few tips may be handy:
• Consider why someone wants to read your email;
• Consider who really needs to read your email;
• edit before forwarding;
• use an appropriate tone and style;
• writing is easier than you think;
• tell people what you want from your message;
• your subject line is an important aspect of communication;
• use an eye-easy presentation to increase read-ability;
Be kind and polite to people. Let them know you have revolutionized how you handle email. Tell them what you expect and how you will respond. Using the guidelines outlined above it is possible to become an effective inbox manager through an understanding of technology, communication principles, and relationship building–topics familiar to the human services professional.
Of course all this takes discipline--and not the plastic handcuffs and leather whip kind. Overall, be patient. Change takes time and every transition plan is initially bumpy.
RmcoxHere is the annotated link dump source for this article. Note that most of these items arrived via the newsletter from The Gilbert Center’s
Nonprofit Online News. The annotations are lifted, with some minor editing, directly from the publication I received them in.
The November 2005 Edition of Nonprofit Online News Journal: This month we offer five articles: My own "Twelve Ways to Fail at Email" follows a key principle of mine, which is that its often easier to remove barriers to success than to assemble new engines to plow forward. We have our usual features, including a new Quicksheet: a radical revision of the Workflow of the Email Savvy Organization.
I highly recommend
Campaign Monitor's Email Design Guidelines for 2006. In brief, their six recommendations are: (1) Never use images for important content like headlines, links and any calls to action. (2) Use alt text for all images for a better experience in Gmail and always add the height and width to the image to ensure that the blank placeholder image doesn't throw your design out. (3) Add a text-based link to a web version of your design at the top of your email. (4) Ensure your most compelling content is at the top (and preferably to the left). (5) Test your design in a preview pane, full screen and with images turned on and off before you send it. [Most importantly in this environment of increasingly strict filters at the server level–although spam still continues to get through while friends’ messages don’t:] (6) Ask your subscriber to add your From address to their address book at every opportunity.
Stever Robbins has compiled some great
Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload, which include: Use the subject line to summarize, not describe. Give your reader the full context at the start of your message. Make action requests clear. Separate topics into separate emails. Edit forwarded messages. Make your messages one page or less. Check email at defined times each day. Send out delayed messages. And finally, my favorite, charge people for sending you messages. (You'll have to read it to know what this means.)
You can find more of his articles at http://LeadershipDecisionworks.com. He is the author of It Takes a Lot More than Attitude to Lead a Stellar Organization
Stever Robbins (HBS MBA '91) writes The Leadership Workshop, an interactive monthly column answering questions from readers on management issues. Feel free to ask him a question for possible inclusion in future columns. You can find more about Stever and his book on his Web site.
This article is from the Harvard Business School newsletter Working Knowledge.
Originally written back over the course of the mid-nineties,
A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email by Kate Sherwood, has aged well. Unless you are totally enamored of rich text or HTML email, even the parts on formatting are still useful.
The Subject line in a piece of email is second in importance only to the From line in terms of its impact on whether someone opens your email. Until just recently, Nonprofit Online News, for all its best practices, had terrible subject lines in its email versions. This was a source of some embarrassment to me when I would lecture on the subject and we finally changed our habits this year. If you publish an email newsletter or calls to action to your stakeholders, you might be interested in these
15 Tips for Improved Subject Lines from the folks at Email Labs.
