Steve Dotto here.
Thanks for joining me today.
Actually today is the first demo that I’m shooting with my new lighting setup so I hope
that everybody likes the color of Steve a little bit better today.
I hope I look a little bit better.
We have a very serious topic to discuss today, one of my favorite topics, dealing with email
overload.
Anybody who follows this channel knows that I have a real thing about the productivity
lost and the stress gained from not having control of our email.
Today, we’re going to talk about that not from a prospective of technology.
We’ve looked at a lot of the different pieces of technology in the past but today I wanted
to spend a little bit of time and chat with you about what we can do in our email and
how we address it and how we actually manage it procedurally in order to a) reduce the
amount of email overload and amount of stress; and b) also to increase the chance that an
email will properly be acted on, that it will become an asset to the conversation, to the
project as we move ahead and not be become an impediment to others and to ourselves.
So the first things that I wanted to talk about are those darned addressing fields.
Obviously To, CC and BCC are there for a reason and they all have their place but using them
properly is a very important thing.
So number one is if you are the primary recipient of an email in the To field, you have a responsibility
to act on that email.
Now if you are CC’ed in an email, you have no responsibility to respond whatsoever.
You only have the responsibility to audit it and see exactly what’s happening and
then just basically audit it.
If you’re in the BCC field, a) you should first of all question why you’re in BCC.
If it’s interoffice communication and somebody is basically copying you so that nobody else
knows that you’re aware, well that carries all sorts of extra social dilemma, doesn’t
it?
So I think personally that’s a very bad idea.
Now we all use BCC.
I use it with my mail lists when I’m sending out to a small group of people that are say,
involved in a course and I don’t really want to share anybody’s email address with
everybody else.
That’s the purpose of BCC, not to be nefarious and to hide the fact that you’re telling
your boss or you’re telling a coworker, including them in a conversation so they can
be a voyeur in that conversation.
So be very careful about how you use that.
It could come back to haunt you.
Now as mentioned, the To and the CC fields are really your responsibility to respond
but you can also make sure that you pay attention to it as you’re addressing the email.
Don’t send to people in the To address if they don’t need to respond.
They don’t have to be included.
Send it to the primary person and then CC everybody else so that they don’t feel a
responsibility to reply.
When you get an email that you have no responsibility to reply to, if you’re in the CC field,
don’t just send back a comment, “Got it,” “Okay,” “Thanks.”
No need to be polite.
That just adds to the volume of email in everybody’s inbox.
You can just dispense with that immediately.
The next thing I want to talk about is the subject field which is the most powerful tool
we have as far as making sure that email is properly processed and handled.
Now I rely for a lot of my thoughts on email on a woman named Carol Sutherland.
She teaches courses on email management, productivity and team management here in Vancouver.
I’m going to have a link to her site at Sutherland Consulting but she did a series
of seminars with me where she taught people about developing an email chart within the
company and a lot of what I’m saying today, I’m just parroting the things that Carol
taught me around how we manage email especially within an enterprise and within a group.
If you want to go straight to the source, I will have links to Carol’s information
as we go along.
But for now, let me paraphrase what she says about the subject matter because this is really
important.
If you’re expecting somebody to act on an email, put it on the subject line.
She recommends putting it right at the front of the subject line.
I don’t care if you put it at the front of the subject or at the end of the subject
but if I’m expecting you to do something and I’m writing an email to you, if I put
“Action Required” right there at the front of the email, you know that action is required
whether it’s at the front or the back.
If I put “By Thursday” or by a date, then you know even more that you have a responsibility
to do that.
If you see this in your inbox, you can’t ignore this.
You are going to recognize the fact that you have a responsibility to act and to react
to the email.
This clarity, this not having people infer from the subject matter but giving them clear
directions and clear instructions in the subject line is a great method for increasing your
venture’s productivity.
Then let’s talk about the actual body of the email itself.
Carol recommends if it’s a long email, if it’s more than a paragraph or two, to summarize
exactly what’s happening in the very first paragraph, in the first few lines, especially
if you’ve CC’ed a lot of people.
They’re able to then read the summary.
They don’t have to waste time on the body.
That’s a good practice as well.
Additionally if there is action required, make sure that the last thing you say in the
email is the action which is required stated clearly.
Don’t be nebulous about it.
Don’t say, “What do you think?
Is this a good idea?
Thoughts?”
“Thoughts?”
is a terrible way to end an email because if I’m reading that email, I think that
you want something back from me and now I’m noodling, trying to figure out exactly what
my thoughts are on it.
Instead, you can say, “Steve, can you please reply to this person by this date with this
information and let me know that you’ve done that.”
Very clear instructions.
Then I know exactly what I have to do and I can proceed.
This kind of clarity, this kind of decisiveness, is a real benefit to moving the ball further
downfield in any project that you’re working on.
Allow me to summarize some best practices you might decide to participate in if you
want to improve the communication value of the email going out from your desktop.
Number one, only address email in the To field to people who have to respond.
Be clear about what the response you expect is.
If it’s for information only, type “For information only.”
If they need to reply to you by a certain date, say, “Action required by (certain
date).”
Be clear and concise about what you expect from an email right in the subject line.
In the CC field, only copy people who should be auditing and not the cover-your-ass emails
that so many people send that basically look like you’re busy.
Don’t do that.
Thirdly, as far as the BCC field, use that sparingly and don’t use it to kind of cloak
activities so that people can voyeuristically view email.
In the body of the email itself, if it’s a long email summarize it in the first paragraph
so that people who are just auditing the email can get on with their day more quickly.
At the end of your email, make sure that you are clear about what action you expect from
the email and don’t be airy-fairy.
Don’t say “Thoughts?”
or any of those sorts of things.
If you start to act with your email this way, perhaps others in your organization will follow
suit and your life will become easier as well as people start to send you clear instructions.
But regardless, you’re going to benefit because you are going to be clear and decisive
and you’re going to take a real leadership position in every communication that you embark
on.
If you are in an organization that is thinking about this system-wide, find somebody like
Carol Sutherland who comes in, takes a look at your email system within your entire venture
and then gives you a program that teaches everybody how to get on the same page and
handle email in the same way, which just basically moves the whole enterprise ahead that much
more effectively.
I hope you found this video today to be an effective use of your time.
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I’m Steve Dotto.
Thanks for spending time with me today.