Improve your Outlook: How to use Email
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The Ten Commandments of e-mail
Our business is awash with email, but we don’t communicate very well. There is a difference between providing data which is meaningless and useful information that can be acted upon. Consider these Ten Commandments for email, and improve the way we communicate:
1. I trust you to do your job, you don’t need to copy me in every time you ask someone else to do something. I trust my team to do their job too- don’t cc me when you ask them to do something- I won’t chase it for you; that’s between you and the person you contacted.
2. If you want me or my team to do something, ask directly in the email, don’t just copy me on a message relating to the subject and expect me to work out what you want.
3. Use the @NAME convention when you want different people to pick up actions from an email. Eg Customer X has reported a problem with the system, @FRED can you call them and find out exactly what it is @BILL can you check our logs to see if we can see a problem at our end.
4. An escalation is a direct email describing the problem and actions to be taken; it is not sending an email to someone else and cc-ing the world. You are managing the situation so you need to think it through and email your analysis as a status update- I don’t need to know every action you are taking. Like I said, I trust you to do your job.
5. For quick updates and messages use only the subject line and prefix it with ‘1:’ to show its a one line message that doesn’t need to be opened
6. I will assume that I am required to take no action when cc on an email; cc means For Information Only, and it should be used sparingly. Don’t expect me to react when cc on an email.
7. Minutes and actions live in formal documents and stored in the project folder on the file server and must never be in the body of an email- attach the document to the email or (even better) put links to the document in the email.
8. A blind cc (BCC) is almost always the wrong thing to do- deal with the situation a better way
9. Categorise your email before sending: If you require action from the recipient, prefix the subject with ‘ACT:’ making it easy to identify those emails that require action. If the message really is just for information, prefix the subject line with ‘INF:’
10. Pick up the phone more often and speak to me
