E mails - a outlook

Are you investing a lot of your time at work clearing your mail box? I am sharing some tips which you may find useful. Please do share your feedback and comments.

Emails- An outlook- Maneesh Menda

Try stepping away from your desk or going on a holiday: when you get back chances are you will be welcomed by hundreds of emails eagerly waiting for you. Most of us would agree that we spend significant amount of time at work just combing through dozens of e mails that we send and receive every day. Ironically, as you get senior in an organization, the amount of time spent on emails increases too. I am quite sure that if e mails take a significant amount of your time in your job, we are not far away to include "E mail Management" in Job descriptions of individuals! In my various interactions with colleagues & friends I have noticed people being obsessed with e mails. So what is the big deal? For me it is an opportunity to use time more productively. E mails are definitely a great medium to communicate, but a bit of prudence would certainly help us all in being more productive at work. If on an average you spend 3-4 hours at work doing e mails and if you can bring that down it does provide you work hours you can use more wisely. E mail management, therefore for me requires a life style solution.

Here are some tips to make your work life easier and more productive:-

1) Do you really need to send an e mail? E mail though convenient, can never replace the quality and outcome you can derive out of a personal interaction. I see many at times colleagues go back and forth on e mails to put across their view points where perhaps a quick telephone interaction would have been productive. Sometimes the language you use in your e mails can be misconstrued and misinterpreted. Also connecting in-person does foster great working relationships too. An email can follow after the interaction to document what was agreed. If we do receive an e mail which we think is better responded through a quick call, we would do so. Also there are so many auto notifications that clutter your inbox everyday which we need to challenge.

2) Be mindful on whom you copy - I know colleagues who love to copy every possible individual in an e mail. It is important to first reflect on whether the individuals copied actually need to be copied in the e mail. The thumb rule is that the person to whom the e mail is addressed is the person who is expected to be taking any action or respond to the e mail and the person copied are generally for information only. My preference is to Think twice before copying some one on an email. I would prefer to have the e mail interaction and then forward the outcome to all rather than have all the interactions being copied to all. I've come across colleagues who CC their Manager in all e mails, perhaps to impress upon them the amount of work they do and how rigorously they follow up. I think as a Manager I would prefer an e mail confirming closure of the task or action rather than being copied on the entire e mail chain.

3) Reply to all- Do you really need to? Many organizations have deactivated the Reply to all functionality in outlook. Yes and there is a reason too. Take for instance that you are seeking feedback on a particular topic from 15 individuals. Imagine if all of these individuals start replying to all in their responses. This translates to 15 e mails for all. What if the sender of the e mail requests all to send the responses directly and not to use reply to all? We would have only 15 e mails hit the box of the sender. The sender can then consolidate these responses and present that back on an email in a structured manner. We create unnecessary e mail chains. Even if the sender has copied all you need to challenge on whether it is relevant to use reply to all. Also with limited capacity of your e mail box we must be prudent on attaching the documents time & again.

I had instances when a 6 MB file was send across by a colleague and all colleagues who were replying to that e mail kept attaching the 6MB file. In no time I had ~60 MB in my inbox which was the same 6MB file from 10 colleagues.

4) Use various tools available- I often get e mails requesting me to advise on whether a suggested schedule/ time is fine for a call or meeting. I always recommend that you keep your calendar up to date so that it makes it easier to organize calls and meetings. When you book your leave ensure you mark the same on your outlook calendar too so that you do not end up getting meeting/ call requests on days you are not available. Similar is the case for public holidays. The scheduling feature in the calendar enables us see through common slots and makes it convenient to organize meetings/ calls. Another powerful feature very rarely used is the voting option. If you are seeking preference amongst choices use the voting button. This is a powerful tool to get responses and track them through. Even for decision making if you want a group of individuals to Approve or Reject you can use the voting button feature and can easily track how many have approved and rejected. Also I know that many at times e mails are used as a tool to follow up and chase for responses. Using the task feature can enable assign tasks and remind people of the due dates/ timelines for a particular task/ activity. Communicator/Lync is another powerful tool which helps connect instantly.

5) Keep it short- I dread reading long e mails which lack structure and do not spell out the objective. Remember, e mails may not be able to replace a meeting or a conference call that is needed to debate and share thoughts and ideas. Clearly articulate in the body/ subject of the e mail the purpose of the e mail. Use bullet points and avoid long and lengthy paragraphs makes reading easy. Also clearly spelling out the action required helps achieve the right outcome.

Sometimes there is the possibility that the action required is hidden somewhere in the body of the e mail and gets lost.

Finally I also see an opportunity to manage your archives and only archive those e mails which you would need for future. Also if you have had a trail of e mails with an individual just archive the latest mail and delete the previous ones as the latest e mail trail would have all the previous interactions. This applies for the e mails you send too.

I would love to hear from you on your feedback/ suggestions too