I am guilty. Boy, am I guilty. I often feel like the infamous Jesse James of American Old Wild West legend and lore. I have an itchy trigger finger. The Mobile Device is out of the holster and the bullets.read e-mails… flying faster than the eye can see…
As a follow up to last week, I decided to go “true confessions”—the trials and tribulations of social networking as expressed through the e-mail channel. If you have been following, there is a whole new school of management thought and potential best practice that says sit on your e-mails, don’t answer right away, or at all.
Imagine that? I’m in a dead sweat just thinking of holding back. Like a drug addict going cold turkey…
What’s the point?
One is expectation. Answer too quickly all the time, and soon the adrenalin rush keeps you up all night just waiting for a chance to answer something, or the expectation of your quick as lightening response hurts you the first time you don’t or are unable. Or worse, you are expected to answer before the question is even asked…go figure!
The second is accuracy. Refer to last week. What is the danger of reacting too quickly? Personally, I have a half a dozen “why did I do that” stories. At least, are we giving anyone our best value add by pulling the trigger before we think?
The third is opportunity cost. Again, refer to last week. How much time do we waste by emulating the outlaws of yester-year. How many needless people read and react and thus by implication demand answers…you get the point.
For an answer, I decided to leave the North America of the 1800s and look to France of the late 1600s and early 1700s and to one of my favorite sources who I believe would have been amazing blogger and social network aficionado, in fact he was!
When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
Voltaire
And there you have it. Wait. Think. Confirm. Act. It can be a holy experience.
As I said, I write this for myself, and as much as I love the image of the two gun holster and the quick as lightening draw, look where Jesse ended up…..
Wait…I just got an e-mail — HELP
What do you think?
Hmm, I can’t help but feel that one man’s ‘potential best practice’ is another’s blatent rudeness. I suppose accuracy is always welcome but I would not be happy if I found out someone was sitting on one of my emails for no real reason
I’ll get back to you on that…once I have time to think about it.
I rather like the thought of being an email outlaw. Holstered up in leather chaps, and a big 45!….
I completely agree with Nick – nothing more annoying than a non response!
I’m going to side with David on this one. It’s not a matter of purposely sitting on the response, it’s about thinking before you shoot back, which we, myself included, do too often. Responsive is good, thoughtful response is better, and that doesn’t always happen without a bit of reflection. And, sometimes picking up the phone, or getting the stakeholders together for a short meeting, can be far more effective (and efficient). While we’re at it, we all need to think harder about who should get our reply. “Reply all” should be the exception, not the norm.
Not many years ago I built some email classifiers for a start-up (computer forensics and email analytics). Their first classifier (using their own email server) split email into business vs non-business (“personal”). Accuracy was up over 85%. One guy sent 95% “personal” and the company average was a bit over 50%.
The most revealing finding was that the strongest predictor variable was “time of day” – business emails went out mainly just before lunch or CoB, personals were in the first half hour after arriving or after/during lunch.
Another insight (and also useful predictor) was “style” using the Flesch/Kincaid simple metric. Most business emails fell in a very narrow style range (around grade 8 or 9). “Personals” were anything from 2 to 16.
What did the CEO do about this alarming proportion of non-business emails? Basically nothing (except for a word to the addicted “95% man”). Although the volume of personal email was high, the time to compose or read them was very brief (we believed). It was better to get it out of the way and then on with work…
Taking the immediacy out of the response may have meant half a day went into planning it. The “rudeness” Nick mentioned could also be a kind of nonchalant “hard to get” social interplay.
can you call me to explain that more……seriously — I see it like that old United commercial — get closer to yoru clinets — get back on the road — sometimes a call or a better thought out note is what it takes.
Also recentky read that teh habit of getting teh last word in — with a letter like K or a final thank you or whatever wastes more time and space than you can imagine…..guilty!!!