Every organization has at least one employee whose bad email habits are negatively impacting their colleagues’ productivity. Are you that individual (i.e., how many of the following apply to you?):
- Black hole inbox – You literally have hundreds of read and unread messages sitting in your inbox at any given time. Those little file folders to the left just never really appealed to you … you’re way ‘too busy’ to read / file every little email that comes your way. ‘Catching up on email’ is always on your list of ‘weekend work’ (but you never quite get around to it). You frequently ask your colleagues questions, only to have them respond that they ‘already emailed you the information.’ Every day, at least a couple of people come by your desk to ask if you ‘got their email.’ Jeez … can’t they see that you’ve got, like, 1,100 in your inbox??
- Subject lines that don’t pertain to the message — You treat that subject line space like a Mad Lib — just plugging in whatever word or phrase that suits your mood. Nevermind that other people who get lots of email can more efficiently get through their inbox when the subject lines are clear previews of the contents of the message.
- Cryptic messages – Your colleagues feel like they’re working on the Sunday Times crossword when trying to decrypt your email messages. They’d really like to avoid having to come over and talk to you in person, but …
- Next step ambiguity – Your emails often contain action items and requirements, but fail to specify due dates or other vital information. When emailing your subordinates, you often forward emails with a “please follow up” message, but minus adequate explanation of what exactly that follow up should look like (i.e., you initiate many fool’s errands).
- Everything is urgent — Your colleagues can’t recognize an urgent email from you, because your urgency volume is *always* on full blast (a broken coffee maker gets the same urgency as a disgruntled key account).
- Unnecessarily cc’ing people – Before you and your colleagues have even come together for a preliminary discussion of a new challenge, you typically sound off the fire alarm by sending a panicked email (and cc’ing everyone, including the boss). There are often more than 20 emails on the ensuing threads.
- Unnecessarily bcc’ing people – You often blind copy colleagues on emails … and they really don’t understand why they’ve been copied. Instead of forwarding the emails to them with a note about why they should care about the thread beneath … you just leave them to their own devices to draw their own conclusions (i.e., they have to read the entire thread).
- Not proofreading — You always just write the email and send it. Other people read and re-read emails before sending them (and the more people they’ve cc’d, the more times they read it before sending). But you don’t have that kind of time (you just like to waste other people’s time with inaccurate / unclear email).
- Unacceptable word length — You frequently get all jacked up on coffee and start hammering out 1,000-word emails. Nevermind that recipients groan when they open up an email and have to turn the scroll wheel three or four times to see the bottom. You’re an artiste … you won’t compromise your work by pulling in the reins on word count.
Most corporations have email policies that focus on things like confidentiality breaches, compliance and other legal liability issues. I’ve heard of very few, however, that set any sort of formal guidelines / expectations for email productivity issues. When you think about how much time gets frittered away by the sorts of behaviors above, it’s a little puzzling why more companies don’t take the time to highlight them as unacceptable.
