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Stop the Email Madness! The madness started early this morning when one of your project team members sent an email posing a simple question about one of the requirements. Sounds simple enough, however he sent the question to a distribution list that was a mile long! Before you know it, everyone is responding and “Replying to All”. Information is flying back and forth at the speed of light and all of a sudden you are sucked into the vortex of email madness! How can we stop this kind of craziness? When the project team is formed, include a set of email ground rules in your team charter and/or your communication plan. Simply state that questions sent out in the form of email should be sent to select individuals. How about setting a ground rule that states if an email goes back and forth more than 2-3 times, it’s time to stop the madness and pick up the phone, or better yet if you are in close proximity, how about taking a short walk to discuss in person? It seems that in our high tech world, we have become reliant on email, text messages, instant messages and all sorts quick communications through all sorts of fancy devices. It’s not to say that this is a bad thing, it’s just that we need to stop once in awhile and think about whether that is the appropriate communication vehicle. We must remember that email communications and the like are considered professional business correspondence. What ever happened to using a salutation, like “Dear David”, leaving a space and then writing some full sentences to express our message? That’s another easy ground rule…Use salutations whenever possible! How about those emails that go on and on and on? Another ground rule could be to keep it brief and to the point. We may also want to make it easier for the reader by setting expectations at the beginning of the email, such as “Approval requested” or “Action needed”. Using the subject line to describe the email is also a great rule to follow, which makes it easier to get the reader’s attention. |
