Five basic rules of email
Image: Eva Rinaldi via Wikimedia Commons cc
The advent of email has probably resulted in the greatest change to how people do business since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
The instantaneous nature of email means people can communicate and collaborate in the workplace to a degree never before possible. Clients or colleagues might be in a different city or even a different country, but email enables them to exchange information and ideas instantly – as if they were just over the partition. Well, almost.
As a communication forum, email is extremely versatile. We all use it – not only for personal communication, but also for more serious functions such as sending proposals or approving quotes. By comparison, other new(ish) technologies such as instant messaging or Twitter are predominately used for more casual exchanges (although business is increasingly using Twitter to reach out to the wider world, sometimes with disastrous results).
Email can also be a very egalitarian tool. It can break down barriers between employees and their superiors, resulting in a freer and franker exchange of ideas and opinions. The flip side is that it is harder to stop someone emailing something stupid that they would never dream of saying in person or on the phone.
Emails provide a permanent electronic record of communications, and the daily news is full of stories of people sending emails that are inappropriate, illegal or just plain dumb. For example, take the exchanges between analysts from one of the agencies responsible for giving the highest possible ratings to the subprime assets of banks just before the global financial crisis:
As you know, I had difficulties explaining ‘HOW’ we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it.
Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card[s] falters.
Obviously the underlying problem here is not the actual emails themselves, but the behaviour they describe. Still, the authors certainly didn’t help their case (there are currently a number of lawsuits pending) by putting these thoughts into words.
So here are five simple questions to ask yourself the next time you are banging out a quick email at work:
What would your boss think of your message or, if it came to it, a jury?
Is your meaning clear, or could it be misinterpreted? Were you suggesting that the project is finished (completed) or finished (ruined)? See Andrew’s post for more contronyms.
Would it be quicker just to pick up the phone?
Does everyone you are sending this to really need to read it? Don’t CC the CEO if you’re just confirming the coffee order.
Should you be sending this from your Gmail address instead?
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