Smart Email
Smart Email
The Build your own HPT Blog is based on the ‘High-Performance Management and Teams’ Management model for improving IT Management and Teams capability. Based on many years of IT management consulting, improving the performance and productivity of IT Departments and Teams across the Insurance, Banking, Finance, Health, Transport, Retail, Superannuation and Technology sectors.
High-Performance Teams are successful because they love their work.
Any team can achieve High-Performance.
High-Performance Teams employ a range of Time Management methods. This is an example of where a team may agree on a method for handling emails.
Smart Email
Open the Inbox.
Now decide within 10 seconds what needs to be done with each email.
Use the Delete, Delegate, Deal with, Decision approach for quickly getting through large amounts of email, especially if done in a scheduled, fixed block of time. (Timeboxing it, for example, is perfect).
Next decide Where to file it (if not deleting it), When to come back to it (to carry out the task it contains) or Wait (for when you're waiting on someone) and Move it to a waitlist folder with a reminder if you like.
Next email, decide within 10 seconds……
If you open the same email more than once, that's wasteful and consumes a lot of time.
Other Options.
Consider flagging the email and holding it over until a Weekly Management Team or staff meeting or until you see the Sender.
If people are sending lots of emails and copying others, they are spreading their responsibilities which is probably an issue – deal with it. Otherwise, you don’t have clear Roles/Responsibilities for everyone that says who owns what. Having them stops email copies dead in their tracks.
A method of evaluating your team members performance is how often and why they are emailing you. Are they not accountable and empowered?
There is no rule that says you must answer an email immediately or at all.
Send back a message that says “Why did you send this?”
“One CEO on this topic told her staff not to send emails requiring her to make a decision about something - in order to make a decision she would probably need to ask clarifying questions leading to even more messages in her Inbox. She told her staff to ring her or make an appointment to see her instead.” The Age Newspaper.
Things to consider.
The best strategy is to control ‘when’ you check email, not allowing it as an interruption, only significant matters should require your immediate attention.
Decide on designated times for checking email, turn off all the alerts and then also manage others' expectations about your response time. Include a note in your signature to let people know you may not reply today.
Try email timeboxing three times a day to clear the Inbox or delegate the Inbox to an assistant with only necessary emails being passed on to you, this is great for getting back time to focus on more important work.
Use filters (rules). Use keywords to split the emails into folders that get attention or are deleted entirely.
The problem of preserving business memory contained in emails.
Every day leave the office with an empty inbox. (It is doable, I did it for years.)
Use email as fast chat: - try restricting messages and replies to the subject line only.
Another option is to stop replying to them. Seriously, this works; answer only the important ones. Once staff understand that you will not automatically respond to every email, they will either come and see you or ring you if it’s that important or start being accountable.
“The most valuable form of communication is face-to-face. The next most valuable is by phone or videoconference. The least valuable form of communication is email and texting.” Alex Pentland.
High-Performance IT Team examples:
Executive Management teams.
Project Office and Project teams.
Technical and Service Delivery teams.
IT/Business integration.
Managed Services teams.
Teams managing mergers and acquisitions.
Print this Tip out, keep in front of you on your desk until it becomes a habit.