ANSWER your EMAIL DAMMIT!

Right now I have about a dozen irons in the fire. Some of them are little capers, some of them are Grand Schemes. ALL of them depend on other people. You really can't get anything done on your own... even the most modest plot to take over the world needs some cooperation and communication from your minions, at the very least.

That said, it just amazes me how many people simply ignore emails. Maybe they don't. Maybe they just file them in a "emails to answer" place or something, but the end result is I don't get an answer, I don't get an acknowledgment, I don't really even know if you got the email or not. (Just last week I found that a couple of emails I sent ended up in a new spam filter...) I feel like I'm being ignored, and I don't like that. On top of that, it's now sitting in the back of my mind as unfinished business, and it's one more thing I have to keep on my plate.

I get that everybody's busy. I'm busy. And I get a whole lot of emails. However, not acknowledging an email that is dealing with important questions, even if they're not particularly important to the recipient, is just plain rude. More than that, though, it's costing me money and time.

There are some pretty significant changes in progress about how we communicate, in case you've been living in a cave (and it doesn't have FIOS). My teenage son is away at school, and there is simply no contacting him by phone. He won't pick up. He won't listen to your lengthy message, and he won't call back. He will, however, respond to a text message. Before you jump to the conclusion that it's just a teenager thing, let me tell you- some older professionals I work with who shall remain unnamed are just the same.

I appreciate that between email, IM, texting, mobile phones, land lines and even snail mail, we're all trying to figure out what works best for whatever purpose... but we also have to keep aware of simple manners. I sent you an email. I expect at least an acknowledgment.

This reminds me of a "Miss Manners" type comment when I was a kid. If someone takes the time to send you an invitation to a party, or give you a gift, you should acknowledge that effort with a thank-you note. Old fashioned manners? Yeah, pretty much, but using email it's not a lot of effort.

Inbox piling up, you say? Impossible to respond to everything, perhaps? Just remember one of the fast emerging rules of managing workloads- the stuff you can take care of first, fast and easy, take care of it. Most often you can just respond to an email with a "Thanks!", or a "Let me get back to you on that... I need to check some things out". How hard is that?

I just had a friend track down some nice fine-art inkjet paper. She, after spending some time looking up the link, sent me an email with the information. I responded with a simple "Thanks!". It took 15 seconds for me to acknowledge my appreciation for what may have been a fair amount of effort for her.

Here are some phrases you may want to think about using.

"Thanks!" has been covered.

"Sorry, I don't have any information yet, I'll let you know when I do.", or,

"Sorry, I don't have any information yet, can you shoot me a note in a month or so?"

"Thanks for your note, but I'm really not interested in ... at this point."

"Thanks for the email, you really should contact ... about this."

You get the idea.

All these tools of communication remind me of a friend's comment when cell phones were becoming a required accessory for anyone in business. "Great," she said. "Just one more way for my clients to not be able to get in touch with me." The point of all this communication is to make communication better, not to make it more frustrating.

One of the most interesting notions is to establish some guidelines on how you prefer people to contact you. Revolutionary, isn't it? Communication about communication? I was working for a small company that used IM for inter-office communications, but the big problem was that everybody had different rules. Many of us used it for the necessary chatter to do our jobs... do we have this, can we get that thing for this client, like that. Many used it for just critical questions- does so-and-so have a credit line of whatever for the purchase we're discussing (right now on the phone)? Some used it for office banter. Some used it for tech support- while you have a trouble call on the phone, IM a tech who may have the answers...


The point is, someone who uses it for mission-critical stuff is going to get annoyed if he's getting hit with office banter or tech questions... and the place I was at, rather than just say, hey, don't use this with me for that, people just got pissed off at each other. Besides that- some things are better discussed on the phone than using the keyboard.

It's easy to dismiss a call, an email, a message as not important. Think of it this way, though. It's important to the person sending it, and it's polite to respond in kind.

Besides. We all can get a lot more done if we communicate.