Several years ago I was faced with a communication issue
that I did not know how to resolve – I could not get straight answers from our
head of sales. He was on the road a lot
and not always able to talk within the confines of my rigid schedule so most of
our communications were via e-mail. I would send long, very detailed emails and
get terse responses or none at all. When
we did speak, things were fine. Finally,
he came to me in frustration and asked that I remove “RE” from the subject
line. During this conversation he
explained that he really couldn’t follow my conversations and e-mail strings
because he did most of his e-mail from his Blackberry (you can now date the
“several years”).
As I started to replace “RE:” with things like “ISSUE
RESOLVED:” or “CALL JIM:” our communication improved. Then he remarked, “You know, I check most of
my e-mails from client waiting rooms, at breakfast or while I’m waiting to
board a plane and it is hard for me to read past whatever comes up in the first
screen of text.” Of course! I wrote most of my e-mail from my desktop in full-screen.
Since that time I have done my best to avoid writing long e-mails. If the message is more than a few sentences long, I should call
the person or put it into a document or some other system if it is
instructions. I try not to ask a
question other than “Do you need my assistance in resolving this?” in an e-mail
string. The busier the person is whom
you are communicating with, the more this is important.
Here is an example:
From CEO- “How is project going?”
My reply – Subject: “Update: how is project going” – Message Body: “On schedule. No serious rocks at
this time. Check this link if you want
details <link to project plan SharePoint>.”
I could provide the CEO with any amount of detail in the
rest of the e-mail, but it would not matter.
One thing that would be really bad, would be to put the “On schedule…”
at the end of a three-page-update.
Here are some opinions of others:
From Guy Kawasaki,
author, publisher and entrepreneur
I get several hundred emails per day. I wish people would
just ask for what they want in the first sentence. I don't need to know their
whole life history to make a decision. Getting people to be brief would save
everyone a lot of time.
From Verne Harnish,
author and growth guru:
Subject Line Etiquette! -- one of my email pet peeves -- the
"Subject:" line of emails should match the substance of the email,
period!! For instance, if there is a request for an 15th April phone call, put
"15th April call" in the Subject line. And if the reply email
switches it to 17th April, don't keep using the old 15th April Subject line.
Take 3 seconds and change the Subject line to 17th April. As back and forth
emails morph into different topics, the Subject line needs to change so it
aligns with the modified or new topic. Take Subject lines seriously and
communication will flow better.
Email Etiquette #2 -- my second pet peeve is too many
requests in one email, especially if they involve different people. I would
rather receive three separate emails with one topic/request per email (with
matching Subject lines!!) than one long email and a generic Subject line.
Email Etiquette #3 -- my third pet peeve are long emails.
The above quote from Guy Kawasaki is his testimonial for Joseph McCormack's
book Brief: Make a Bigger Impact Saying
Less. When we invite big names to keynote our Summits, like Ben Horowitz
for the Growth Summit, we take Kawasaki's advice and put the request both in
the Subject line and as the first sentence of the email. It works rather than
drone on about the details.
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