Email overload tends to go up the more senior you get; executive level managers can easily get a few hundred incoming work-related messages a day. This is so commonplace that they don’t even stop to complain about it; they either cope with the crushing stress or they delegate their Inbox processing to an assistant.
I’ve known one glaring exception, however. I knew one senior manager, a VP of a hi-tech Fortune 500, who had a perennially near-empty inbox, and was receiving a paltry few dozen emails a day. I inquired as to how he got to this enviable state, and he was happy to share. It was quite simple, in a way: this manager simply empowered those under him to do their jobs, and insisted they NOT copy him on email they could handle without him. Rather than hoard updates and status reports he could very well do without, rather than have his people cover their behinds by copying him on everything under the sun, he kept his time and mind free and uncluttered, which allowed him to actually manage – guide, role model and mentor those below him in the organization.
Of course when I say it was simple, that is not accurate: it takes a very unusual personality to manage in this manner, and to overcome old customs and the entrenched attitudes of those around one. Only one in a hundred managers may have what it takes.
Can you be the one?
I’ve written before about various methods of ensuring freedom from interruption in the office; but pre-dating these there was the familiar “Do not Disturb” sign you hang on a hotel room door knob. These used to come in different colors, but they kept pretty much to the same form dictated by their function. A cardboard rectangle with hole… what was there to improve?
Well, on my recent trip to Berlin I saw what someone felt is the next great leap in interruption-busters. The NH Hotel we stayed in had a switch inside the room that would light an electric sign outside it. No more messing with cardboard.
This looks like an improvement… except for one minor detail: it would be all too easy to forget the sign ON when you leave the room, thereby preventing the staff from making your room up in your absence. The old system did not share this drawback – when you shut the door the dangling sign would be sure to catch you eye.
Seems to me that this idea could be made to work better if opening the door would switch the sign off automatically… But then, I am not a Hotel Systems consultant, am I?
I’ve pointed out that people don’t read the emails they’re replying to… and here is one more common manifestation of this: when you send someone an email asking two or three questions, you can be almost certain the reply will only address the first one. The recipient reads your mail, hits a question, responds to it and moves to another message. Then you need to write them another message to get the other items addressed (and create more overload for both parties).
This being the universal case, there are steps you can take to defend against this tendency (besides sending each query in a separate email, which is the common and failsafe solution but exacerbates the IO problem).
- You can give the message a subject line like “THREE questions for you”.
- You can start the message with a statement of the number of queries.
- You can put each question in a separate paragraph, prefixed with “Question 1”, “Question 2”, etc.
- You can do all of the above.
Of course, you can do none of these and hope for the best… but I wouldn’t advise it!
