Consulting Journal: Style - Incoming email

Style: Incoming email

by David Blakey

You can handle incoming email messages efficiently without using your In box as a pending tray.

[Monday 15 December 2003]

Managing your incoming email messages requires discipline. In fact, it requires two disciplines.

Reading

There is a discipline involved with reading your email messages. One of the differences between post and email messages is that you can look through your post and sort it into the sequence in which you want to read it. An email client usually lists your messages in the order in which they were received or in which they were sent. If your email messages are prioritized, it is the sender's priority rather than yours.

You can set up a kind of priority system with your email messages by having a number of ‘boxes’. One box could be called Clients and your email client could transfer all messages from your clients into it. Using this system, you could read all email messages in the Client box first, and then all messages in the News box, and so on. This system is like a spam filter, except that instead of moving junk mail to a Trash box, it moves important mail to your choice of boxes.

I recommend using the same techniques that you should apply to paperwork that arrives on your desk. Your first option should be to read it and then throw it away. For an email message, this means reading it and then sending it to the Trash box. Your second option should be to refer it on to someone else. For an email message, this means reading it and then forwarding it to the person who can best deal with it. With paper, you would write the person's on it and then put it into the internal mail or place it on their desk. The exact parallel with email would be to forward it and then delete it. I recommend another action between these two, and I shall describe it below.

Your third option is to do something. With paper, such as a letter from a client, you would take some action and then reply, telling the customer that you had taken action and describing the result of that action.

You asked me to check on the status of your software.

We expect that the first test version will be complete on 1 June and that we shall commission it in your testing environment by 3 June.

Your own alpha testing can then begin.

This third option is the same with email, with the addition of another action, which I shall describe shortly.

The fourth option, if the three previous options cannot be applied, is to file it. You can file paperwork for action at a later date. You can file magazines in a pile that you will read through in your spare time. I always take magazines with tags stuck to articles of interest to me when I travel, to read during a flight or at my hotel. You can also file email messages, either into boxes in your email client or into paper files after printing them. In every instance, the purpose of filing is to delay action until a later time. In the context of this article, ‘filing’ does not mean ‘archiving’. Again, there is one more action that I recommend, and I shall now describe it.

Replying

Any email message that you simply send to the Trash box is insignificant. I recommend that you should reply to almost every significant email message. For each of the last three of the four options of referring, actioning or filing an email message, you should send a message back to the sender. There is one exception to this, which I shall describe later.

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for your message. I have passed it on to Anna Smith, as@yourcompany.com, who will contact you shortly.

Regards,
David

This ‘referring’ reply achieves two objectives. First, it tells your contact that you have performed some action, by passing on their message. Second, it tells them who to contact in future and provides an email address. You get their message out of your In box and you should have prevented any future messages from being sent to it.

Dear Tim,

Thank you for your invitation to present a paper at your conference.

As my paper will not be due until 15 November, please remind me to complete it if you have not heard from me by 1 November.

Regards,
David

This ‘filing’ reply achieves two objectives. It documents your future actions and it involves someone else to make sure that your filing system works.

The exception

Here is an email message from a client.

I can meet you at your office on Tuesday at 10:00.

confirmed

I had sent an email message to my client suggesting the place and time for a meeting. My client has now replied, with the single word ‘confirmed’. It does not matter how long their reply is: they could have written ‘Yes, David, Tuesday at 10 is fine.’

I do not reply to these messages. This is the single exception to my rule of always replying to each email message. There are times when even consultants allow their clients to have the last word.

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