Ten New Year’s Resolutions we ought to make about
Email
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the telegraph message
"What hath God wrought?" from the Supreme Court chamber in the
Capitol in Washington, D.C., to the B & O Railroad Depot in Baltimore,
Maryland. The telegraph collapsed the world and made it possible to communicate
instantly between places that formerly had taken weeks and even months to say
something or get an answer. Henry David Thoreau observed "We are in
great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and
Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
communicate. . . . We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic . . . ; but
perchance the first news that will leak through the broad, flapping American
ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough." If
Thoreau and Emerson were worried 150 years ago about junk telegrams just think
what they’d have
to say about email.
Five changes email has brought
- Instant reaction.
Email is so cheap and easy folk tap out an instant reaction and click send
without mulling over their input too long. Email communication is more
visceral and sometimes vicious.
- Access to the bosses.
With email addresses widely known just about any person can write directly
to their pastor, DS, general superintendent or college President when they
don’t like something. This means bosses must develop personal
policies on answering as many as a dozen complaining emails a day.
- Democratization of input.
Before email leaders decided things and sent out letters. Now they are
expected to gather input first, canvassing the masses before deciding
anything important. Leaders who decide things without input are now
considered impulsive and out of touch.
- Centralization of
decision-making. Missionaries once simply
made decisions “on the ground” where they were and sometimes went for
months without contact with their mission boards. Now they check with
headquarters before deciding things. Same for youth pastors and their
senior pastors or any other formerly distributed organization.
- Over-communication.
Email is “free” so everyone has decided to use it to get their message out
and even after the junk mail is filtered out there is still lots of
almost-junk left to deal with. When a person receives more than 100 emails
a day (common among leaders and many faculty members) they begin to ignore
many of them as they increasingly are unable to sort the important from
the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough
messages. So here are ten possible New Year’s Resolutions we ought to
consider:
Ten great New Year’s Resolutions
1. I resolve to write clear subject lines. Describe what you want in the subject line say, “2 questions before board mtg.” or “You have any open appointments Wednesday?” or “My outline for your review.” Avoid subject lines with obscure phrases like “Just checking” or “Message outline” or “hey” and never leave it blank.
2. I resolve to use FYI and AYC in the subject line. If you are sending something just “For your information” and there is no action required, put FYI first in the subject line-- “FYI—draft of 2009 budget.” If you don’t expect a person to read it today and you are sending it for them to read “At Your Convenience” start with AYC in the subject line.
3. I resolve to keep it short. State everything you expect to be read in the first paragraph or at the most first screen. Give backup data below this in case they need more info. Write the top last.
4. I resolve to begin at the end. State your question or decision you want made right off. Avoid several paragraphs clearing your throat or lengthy preambles or background statements. Put that at the end.
5. I resolve to use reply-to-all sparingly. When the boss’s secretary emails a staff of 18 asking “Who is available this Sunday to work at the welcome center?” answer the secretary and don’t reply-to-all 18 people saying “I’m not available.” Why make 17 other people delete your junk reply-to-all. Reply-to-all is a function for discussions and deliberations where everyone is “talking” back and forth on a subject.
6. I resolve to restrict cc’s to necessary people. Sometimes people are so proud of their work they add a dozen folk in the cc line just so everyone will know how much they’re doing. This is a cheap and fast way to boast which is often how it looks.
7.
I resolve to be careful of ever using bcc. A bcc sends your message
(and sometimes a whole confidential conversation) to another person secretly.
The ethics of using bcc are increasingly being questioned and if you need to share
another person’s message to someone else simple decency should make us ask the
person first. And when you send your own message secretly to another it is far
safer to paste your message into another FYI email than add a person as a bcc. Remember
if you add a bcc address that person might click reply-to-all and then everyone
will then know you secretly included them as a bcc.
8.
I resolve to avoid making recipients do extra work. When you attach a file be
kind enough to take a few extra seconds to paste it into the email as well as
attaché it—to save people time in opening files. It’s just considerate.
9. I resolve to never use blinking images. Those cute little blinking images in your
email take longer for the recipient to load and sometimes even automatically
will divert your email to the junk mailbox. A related matter is using a
picture of your actual signature if you hold a position where you might worry
about someone pilfering your signature and using it on an unauthorized letter or form.
10. I resolve to not be a spammer. Sending email is like printing money, the more you send the less value each of your emails have. You won’t know this until you stumble on people who don’t remember your emails—sometimes because they have made a filter to divert them into their junk mail box!
Email has been a wonderful blessing of in communication. It is also a curse. If we are just a bit more careful our own emails might be considered more of a blessing than a curse.
So what do you think? What resolution would you
suggest?
During the first few weeks, click here to comment or read comments
Keith Drury January 6, 2009
Related column: Tips on handling the Email blizzard