Two recent posts about e-mail are interesting enough to comment on:
LifeHacker talks about research at the University of Chicago that found people overestimate an e-mail recipient's ability to interpret the tone of the message. You've all had the experience of sending an innocently innocuous e-mail, only to find out that it caused a furor when its recipient thought your e-mail was a declaration of your intent for corporate domination, or sending a joking e-mail only to later find out that you now have a death warrant out on you because someone thought your joke was a kamikaze attack on their competence.
I have some experience with this, having directed departments in Colorado and Denmark while based in California, and now interacting with headquarters in Minnesota while based in California. The most important consideration I emphasized when opening a research center in Berkeley for a Minnesota company was communication because I knew that communication can be strenuous when face-to-face is not possible. I found e-mail communcation to be particularly problematic when communicating with Europe because (i) the language difference caused misinterpretation of phrases that would normally be correctly interpreted by a colleague in the US, and (ii) the time difference gives European colleagues all day to mull over an e-mail to (mis)interpret it, while the same happens with e-mails that received from Europe. This was particularly problematic given that the R&D departments on the two different continents were reconciling a merge and trying to redefine their own roles and responsibilities.
A second recent interesting post on e-mail social protocols is from Guy Kawasaki, startup guru in the Bay Area. Guy gives a list of 12 tips for effective e-mails. Some of them are pretty basic for anyone with a modicum of internet savy (#3: Don’t write in ALL CAPS), but one of them I actually mentioned in a phone conference today to my MN colleagues (without yet seeing Guy’s recommendations): #2: Limit your recipients. This last one is something I realized a long time ago: the more recipients that you include in an e-mail, the less likely that anyone will respond. Presumably, increasing the number of recipients increases any recipient's assumption that someone else will respond, so each is less likely to respond themselves. If I really want a response to something, I will send the e-mail to only *one* person even if more than one person is appropriate. Occasionally I’ll send the e-mail separately to several recipients so each will only see themselves as the recipient and be more likely to respond. Guy incitefully likens this group recipient mentality to the bystander effect (although this gives too much credit to those who simply are terrible at replying to e-mails). Guy’s other advice is worthwhile and jibes with my experience, so check it out.
One final note on e-mail: I’ve found that the younger a person is, the more likely they are to use e-mail over all other modes of communication. My own rule is face-to-face first, then phone, then e-mail, then telegraph, then gossip, then leaving secret notes in the knothole of an oak tree in front of Boo Radley place. Efficient dialogue, follow-up responses, nuances and basic communication forms become less effective as you move down my communication mode list, yet many people appear to rather have their hand nailed to their mouse than pick up a phone or walk down the hall to talk.
Always be the first to congratulate an opponent who succeeds, the last to criticize a colleague who fails.
Posted by: Jordan Jumpman | August 06, 2010 at 05:44 PM