How Responsive Are You?
Richard A. Moran
Venture partner, author, speaker, advisor, radio personality. Lending perspective, prescriptions and personality to the workplace.
My first boss told me in no uncertain terms: THESE ARE THE RULES, and they should never be broken if you want to be successful.
- Every phone call should be returned within 24 hours. Even from people you don’t know.
- Every memo should have a response by the next business day. Even if the response is “I am in receipt of your memo, stay tuned.”
- Each piece of correspondence received should be acknowledged and a response prepared and returned within three business days.
Today, it is rare to make a phone call or receive one. No one even knows what a memo is and no one receives written letters unless it's from the IRS. The rules have changed and are now, well, a little ambiguous. There are some general guidelines, like:
- An email needs to be returned the same day. Probably.
- A text should be returned in five minutes. Probably.
- And a phone call? Depending on who it is, maybe someone will get around to it eventually.
Some would say that these “guideline” response times are too slow. This group would say an email should be returned within the hour and a text within a minute. This same group would be forgiving on returned phone call times because this is the group that never makes phone calls or would die before posting an “Automatic Out of Office” response.
Others would say, emails, texts and calls are the source of all distractions and inefficiencies. This group would choose not to be measured by response time.
The workplace is moving so fast today that the quicker the response, the better is always a good rule. Acceptable and exact response times today are a moving target with lots of variables that dictate the right answer.
One thing I do know - to be labeled as unresponsive in today’s workplace is the kiss of laziness and a step toward the exit door.
What is your response time? What do you think are the new rules for responsiveness?
Owner/Dono RGL Consulting/Siemens 25 years/CFO/Renewable Energy/Engineering /Sustainability?
11 年The truth is that I don’t need to demonstrate the level of responsiveness to everyone. Furthermore, I don’t need everyone I interact with to demonstrate the same level of responsiveness toward me. What I do need to do is express my expectations Define how responsive you are going to be. Segment your contacts. Who is your inner circle? What about the next level out? What about acquaintances? What about complete strangers? I have a different standard for each. I don’t think I need to tell them; I just operate by these standards
International Executive Coach & Author | Founder of ScaleYOU | CEO & Partner at LeanMail | Expert in Productivity and Leadership Development
11 年Here is a partial list guidelines regarding responsiveness: 1. Responses are not mandatory. You do not need to, and should not respond to informational mails that do not contain a request for a response, nor should you respond to mails where you are in the Cc:. Also, we should assume that someone has received a mail if it doesn’t bounce. “Did you receive my mail, sms, phone message, are veiled outdated control mechanisms. 2. You should not respond to every mail that requests a response. It is a question of appropriateness regarding the sender and the recipient. Taking a moral approach like, “you should respond to mails out of courtesy” falls prey to discourteous people who unwittingly or wittingly steal your resources with inappropriate or very low priority (maybe not for them, but for you) requests, i.e . “Hi Jim, this is Rich, I’m a friend of Bob’s and he told me that you were in Cancun last year. Could you recommend a good resort?” Not everything should make it into your agenda and filtering these types of requests is part of anyone’s job. 3. There is no rule about how quickly you should respond to a mail. Time limits are a function of the type, content and sender of the mail. Temporal limits like within 2 hours or 24-hours are enacted when organizations are not willing to spend the necessary time educating employees on importance and urgency. 4. Unless you put a deadline on a mail, don’t expect a timely (according to the content) response. 5. The best way to know how quickly to respond to a communication is to put yourself in the shoes of the sender while remaining conscious of your own need to be effective and efficient. 6. Quite often it is the sender that impedes responsiveness through ambiguity. ? No deadline; ? too many topics; ? no use of bullet points; ? too complex; ? you didn’t make it clear as to what you actually wanted 7. If someone requests something by a certain date it is always a good idea to let them know that you are in agreement with the deadline as soon as it is efficiently possible for you to respond so that they are not wondering if there is agreement. 8. The better you are at understanding the above guidelines, the more the right people will like you and the wrong people will leave you alone. Think of attraction and filtering as a synergistic combination.
Owner/Dono RGL Consulting/Siemens 25 years/CFO/Renewable Energy/Engineering /Sustainability?
11 年The truth is that I don’t need to demonstrate the level of responsiveness to everyone. Furthermore, I don’t need everyone I interact with to demonstrate the same level of responsiveness toward me. What I do need to do is express my expectations Define how responsive you are going to be. Segment your contacts. Who is your inner circle? What about the next level out? What about acquaintances? What about complete strangers? I have a different standard for each. I don’t think I need to tell them; I just operate by these standards
Owner/Dono RGL Consulting/Siemens 25 years/CFO/Renewable Energy/Engineering /Sustainability?
11 年The truth is that I don’t need to demonstrate the level of responsiveness to everyone. Furthermore, I don’t need everyone I interact with to demonstrate the same level of responsiveness toward me. What I do need to do is express my expectations Define how responsive you are going to be. Segment your contacts. Who is your inner circle? What about the next level out? What about acquaintances? What about complete strangers? I have a different standard for each. I don’t think I need to tell them; I just operate by these standards
Business Development Manager @ LOQI | Business Development
11 年On average I receive well over 100 emails per day, and respond to any necessary inquiries generally in less than an hour, unless I was out to lunch. Phone calls are usually returned within 30 min, and even though I don't really receive texts for business, I still try to return those within an hour as well. I think the connectivity we now have makes it harder to justify a delayed response.