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I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

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Re: I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

#101

Post by therealdrag0 »

jstanley wrote: post #48
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #19

As a manager or senior a huge part of your job is communication and distributing information, and email is one of, if not, THE core method of doing this. The author has decided to provide poor communication because she can’t handle her inbox. One word replies can be extremely misleading and will cost her more time overall than reading and replying to her emails properly. I would be fuming if I was her boss or worked…

> The author has decided to provide poor communication On the contrary! The author has decided to provide efficient, immediate, communication, instead of vaguely planning to send a more detailed reply later if she maybe gets around to it. If everybody treated email this way it would be 100x more efficient. If her reply doesn't contain the info you need, just reply back asking for the info you need, and she'll reply w…

Isn't this what instant messaging is for?

Re: I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

#102

Post by rene_bg »

bshimmin wrote: post #66
splittingTimes wrote: post #58

I started to follow this approach [1] 6 month ago and it is amazing how much clearer my own thoughts in communication have become. 1. Subjects with keywords. The subject clearly states the purpose of the email, and specifically, what you want them to do with your note. Keywords: ACTION, SIGN, INFO, DECISION, REQUEST, COORD 2. Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). Lead your emails with a short, staccato statement that declares…

so try to fit all content in one pane, so the recipient doesn’t have to scroll Oh no, have we introduced "the fold" into emails too, after a decade of forlornly trying to persuade people it doesn't exist on the web?

I especially like the Medium-like sites that force you to scroll over 50 cm of a huge image before some content appears...

Re: I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

#103

Post by therealdrag0 »

account0099099 wrote: post #40

This doesn't work. I've gotten many bad reviews, because people thought I was being "curt" or "mean" because I was replying to their question with short replies. None, of my emails were intended to be mean, I just didn't see the point in fluffing up my emails, and only responded with the required information, but I guess people require the fluff or they get their feelings hurt.

I think I'm fairly clean and direct in my emails, but that doesn't mean you can't pay attention to how your communication comes off. A friendly opening, ("Hey bob"), and closing ("Cheers, {initials}") should be sufficient to make you not sound like a monster. Maybe throw in a smily face once in a while to remind them you're human.

Re: I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

#105

Post by xbeta »

LeeHwang wrote: post #20
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #19

As a manager or senior a huge part of your job is communication and distributing information, and email is one of, if not, THE core method of doing this. The author has decided to provide poor communication because she can’t handle her inbox. One word replies can be extremely misleading and will cost her more time overall than reading and replying to her emails properly. I would be fuming if I was her boss or worked…

Yea I can see this backfiring over the long term. A counter example is Nintendo, where Sakurai was literally recorded, so people wouldn't be confused about the project status and what he told them to do. https://www.polygon.com/2013/11/20/5127488/a-day-in-the-extr...

micromanagement at its extreme?

Re: I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

#106

Post by otterpro »

Since moving to Slack, my email has been reduced drastically (both in length and also in quantity), and also writing long emails were limited for sake of archiving or recording as part of formality. Slack, or similar platform, allows workers to write shorter messages, as well. However, one downside is that Slack is more chatter-prone, so the message has been shortened, but now there's a lot more chatter/messages going around.

Re: I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

#108

Post by notatoad »

nunez wrote: post #85
drb311 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Hey Jane, I need your input on how to prioritize my current work. Can you provide guidance on where I should focus? >>Bug XYZ was assigned to me and it's taking longer to complete because we have a dependency on Vendor ABC completing a change to their web service. This is impacting the commitment to my team on Feature 123 because we are near the end of our sprint. >>Lemme know. Yes

> Can you provide guidance on where I should focus? Should be the call to action/last sentence instead of "Lemme know" (I read that as passive-aggressively asking for a follow up? > because we have a dependency on Vendor ABC completing a change to their web service. This is impacting the commitment to my team on Feature 123 because we are near the end of our sprint. Too many words. Saying that vendor ABC is completin…

"lemme know" isn't passive-agressive, it's a clear request. you've got to sandwich the information you are providing inbetween two copies of the request:

- start with the request, so the recipient knows why they are reading the main content of the email before they start

- give them all the information that you can to help them respond

- and then end with the request again so it's clear what you actually need and they don't have to scroll back up to read it.

the request shouldn't be more than a sentence, so it's not significantly adding to the length to repeat it.

don't be shy about asking for a response - the whole point of an email should be to get a response, and being clear about what you need in the response is just helping your recipient. And if you don't need a response, be clear about that too - but if you're sending email that doesn't require a response, reconsider whether you need to be sending the email.

Re: I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

#110

Post by amyjess »

vidarh wrote: post #72
account0099099 wrote: post #40

This doesn't work. I've gotten many bad reviews, because people thought I was being "curt" or "mean" because I was replying to their question with short replies. None, of my emails were intended to be mean, I just didn't see the point in fluffing up my emails, and only responded with the required information, but I guess people require the fluff or they get their feelings hurt.

It works, but as a general rule, you need to include more fluff than the person above you in the hierarchy unless you know they're fine with you being shorter. The trick is figuring out just how much more fluff is ok. But what will come across as "curt" or "mean" is if your e-mails are substantially less fluffy than those of your boss or your co-workers. You need to adapt to the style in use in the business, not beca…

> But what will come across as "curt" or "mean" is if your e-mails are substantially less fluffy than those of your boss or your co-workers.

You have to be especially careful to not treat people who don't report to you as if they're your subordinates. It's bad to do that to people on your own team, and it's worse to do that to people on another team. A good way to build a bad relationship with someone is to treat them like your lackey when they're not even in the same reporting chain as you.

I've been treated like this before, by someone on another team who sent me a number feature requests that involve significant new work, and by "requests", I mean "demands", without any fluff or niceties or anything. He did this without opening a new ticket (in a company where anything requiring new work needs one), without CCing my boss, and only rarely CCing his boss. This has always resulted in me switching into full-on form letter mode: "Please make your feature request by opening a JIRA ticket in the [redacted] project, and management will choose how to prioritize it.", with my boss and my skip level CC'd on the email.

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