I’m old enough to remember life before “Smart” Phones, Cell Phones, PDAs, and Email.\u00a0 Heck, I still remember the smell of the mimeograph machine when I was in elementary school.\u00a0 Today I have a “Smart” phone; you know part mobile phone, part PDA, part computer, and it contains everything about your day-to-day life; including pictures of the kids.\u00a0 Now I’m am reachable 24x7x365 (unless I turn the sucker off) and I find myself doing emails just about anywhere:\u00a0at the airport; from the house before I leave for the office; nights; weekends; on vacation (unless I go to some remote spot that has no mobile phone service, my favorite type of vacation).\u00a0 Despite all this “communication” I am amazed at the fact that we do not seem to be significantly more effective than we are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I feel there are two key reasons we often do not see substantial improvements:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Email is used as a substitute for what should be a live conversation or meeting (not that I want any more meetings);<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Emails are often incomplete or lead to misunderstandings.<\/p>\n
Substitute for Live Conversation:<\/strong>\u00a0 One way I try to get through my email faster is to look for email chains.\u00a0 I can’t believe how many times I see chains that are 5 to 10 emails long.\u00a0 Once I look at the chain it is clear that either the topic is too complex for email or there is a disconnect between two or more parties on the email.\u00a0 At this point I am either picking up the phone to talk to someone or chiming in as the manager saying to kill the email and meet live.\u00a0 This doesn’t need to be another hour long meeting; often the issue is cleared up with a five minute phone call.\u00a0 If the topic is complex enough to warrant a one hour meeting then it is better to have the meeting up front than wait for a failure and have to manage a one week slip because two people who thought they understood each other didn’t.<\/p>\n Email Misunderstandings:<\/strong> It happens every day, someone sends out an email that says what the writer thinks is straight forward, complete, and non-confrontational.\u00a0 The next thing you know you receive a “Flamogram” back IN ALL CAPS.\u00a0 You naturally think “How could that idiot think that?” and the war of words has begun.\u00a0 I learned a valuable lesson from a foreign customer who is a native speaker of English.\u00a0 He looked at me one day and said “It’s a shame that we are separated by a common language.”\u00a0 In other words, at the root of many of our misunderstandings was the fact that English is not a precise language.\u00a0 This is especially true when you are communicating via email (even more so internationally) because words can have multiple meanings and we all tend to use colloquialisms from time to time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Thoughts for email communications:<\/strong>\u00a0 I’m no email etiquette expert but the following have helped me.<\/p>\n In closing keep the email chains short and the lines of verbal communication open and active.<\/p>\n Ed Gaeta<\/p>\n\n