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Articles and Blogs of Note – September 2016

Digital detoxing dominated the summer headlines as not just the Millennial generation tried it to recover from lack of sex and poor personal relations.  Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton’s public profile continued to suffer from the fall-out from using her personal email account for State business. Not quite email, but take a look at the self-assessment on how robust are your social media posts.

Last but not least there is still time to listen to Monica’s email best practice Q&A session on the Sasha Twining show on BBC Radio Solent.  It’s about 2hrs 09 minutes into the whole programme. 

1. Digital detox the business imperative.   Despite it being related to summer vacations, there are some very important messages around taking a digital detox even if only for a few hours.  We still spend far too much time with our heads in our mobile devices and not enough seeing and listening properly to the here and now. This is a summary of some of the key articles.

2. How to avoid email overload and enjoy a digital detox. If you have not yet had a break, here are top tips on how to reduce the holiday email overload and enjoy a digital detox.

3. Should I hit Reply All – No.  The New York Times devoted nearly half a page to the one word response to a reader’s question about hitting Reply All. That sums up how important the word ‘No’ can be.

4. Cash for favours, emails turn heat up on Clinton. Clinton’s use of a private email server for US Government business continues to dog her Presidential campaign. We’ve think before hitting send. What does this email say about me. What if it fell into the wrong hands. Few of us will make it to such a position of high office but even so emails we wish we had never sent have a habit of coming back to haunt us just as Hilary Clinton is finding out.

5. How safe are your social media posts? A very useful self-assessment exercise to help protect your your professional reputation.

Tags: BBC Radio Solent, Digital detox, Hilary Clinton and Email, holiday email overload, Millenials, Reply All, Sasha Twining

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Overcome the Post Holiday Email Overload

How did your inbox cope with your absence? Unless you packed it up properly, it might be suffering with acute email overload. Take heart. The key is to prioritise your time and decide what is really worthy of your attention. Which emails must you answer? What is no longer an issue and therefore to reply is wasting both your time and the recipients. What really does not deserve your attention and can be deleted?

Here is a seven point fail-safe plan to help you cool it down and maybe even reach inbox zero.

1. Before you even open it, talk to your colleagues to find out what has been happening and what really needs your attention.
2. Open the box and sort and group by person/project. In Outlook use the ‘Show As Conversation’ view. See screen shoot below.
3. Pick off the emails which either must be answered or will earn you brownie points.
4. Pursue this path for an hour or two or at least until either you have identified all the critical emails or you have a meeting looming.
5. Flag all the high priority email (or move them to a folder). Deal with them as quickly as possible.
6. Move all the non-essential emails out of your inbox.
7. Make sure that by the end of the week you have dealt with all the important emails. If you have spare time you might want to peruse the non-essential ones. If not forget them and move on. They are past their sell by date.

If all else fails, delete the lot and declare ‘Email Bankruptcy’ safe in the knowledge that if anything was that important the sender will soon follow-up! When they do, bluff and say their email must have got lost.

Game, set and match. Holiday email backlog cleared. And for you ‘inbox zero’ and a clean inbox.

Need more help keeping on top of your email? Call us now and let us run a ‘Brilliant Email Management’ workshop for your and your colleagues.

Tags: Email Bankruptcy, email overload, holiday email overload

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Articles and Blogs of Note August 2016

These four themes dominated the press and social media over the last few weeks, what to and not to put in an email, the Clinton email scandal, our digital habits and whether or not email is dying.

1.  Bad day at work? Don’t say it by email. Its no secret that most companies have the ability (and authority) to monitor what you say in an email. Few do so unless they have a reason. Banks are always on the look out for early fraud indicators and email content is one. So it was not surprising that phrases like ‘I am not happy’ and ‘I’ll take care of it’ are picked up by banks like Goldman Sachs. The moral, be on your guard when including emotional feelings into a business email. They are best kept for either your personal email account or social media. Click here more.
2. Clinton Email-gate. For those not aware, the gist is that Hilary Clinton used a personal email account to send emails relating to US Government business. Click here for more details and lessons we can all learn from this on-going saga. Although it might be tempting to forward emails from work to home, the bottom line is don’t, as you may put your career at risk. Even though Clinton has been cleared of a major security break the saga continues to dog her Presidential campaign.
3. Our digital habits. More than 29% of American’s would rather give up sex than their smart phone for a week! These are the findings on how smartphones now dominate many people’s life and especially Millenials who feel under great pressure to respond immediately to messages. Although conducted in America and by a software developer (Delvv) there are some useful insights and especially for those interested in the generation gap. For example, only 68% feel phubbing is OK and perhaps not surprisingly those who are more anxious and less happy often expect a faster response than those of the opposite disposition. (Phubbing – snubbing someone you are with physically in favour of checking your phone eg having coffee.)  Click here for more.
4. Is email heading towards extinction? In a bold attempt to reduce email overload, quite a few organisations are turning to alternatives for internal email. Atos led the way about two years ago, although the value of the project has yet to be justified. Now others too are trying to ban all internal emails. Whether or not this will solve the problem or merely introduce another form of digital information overload remains to be seen. Click here for more about this approach to reducing corporate email overload.

Tags: corporate email overload, Hilary Clinton and Email, information overload, Millenials, Phubbing

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Books of Note – Summer 2016 Five Golden Oldies

Our book shelf is bulging with books collected over the last thirty years. What is interesting is how many new books are like old wine in new bottles. Few truly ground breaking books have been published in the last few years, possible exceptions being Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21^st Century. Instead of buying any new books over the past few months we have been re-reading some golden oldies. Here is our pick of the top five. If you have not read them, they should be on your holiday reading list.

1. The 7 habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Covey helps you understand yourself, your goals and the world within which you operate.   He provides templates and guidelines to enable you to build on your strengths and overcome your weaknesses which may be holding you back.
2. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. Christensen demonstrates how a new unforeseen technology break through can knock existing established players out of the game. Written 1997 it is still highly relevant. Witness the demise of the Blackberry when the iPhone arrived.
3. The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams. It will keep you sane and make you laugh in these trying times when the news is all doom and gloom.
4. The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy. First published in 1989, it remains the bible for anyone who wants to understand organisational culture, how they work and change how to flourish in the different types of culture.
5. Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter. First published in 1980 it provides a simple but fundamental five point model to identify an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses and how they can be used to gain and maintain competitive advantage. Thirty years on it remains unsurpassed in the insight it provides into the core principle of creating organisational competitive strategy. Unless of course an unknown innovator comes along but if you read Competitive Strategy you might be able to pre-empt them.

What are your golden oldies?

Tags: Books of note, Charles Handy, Clayton Christensen, Michael Porter, Scott Adams, Stephen Covey

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Limit the business email overload after taking time out

About to take a few days out of the office?  Here are give top tips to avoid coming back to a chronic attack of business email overload.

1. Reduce the current inbox to as near to inbox zero as possible – see 2 and 3 below.
2. Check for any important emails which if left unattended will be urgent when you return. If there are then either deal with them now or send a holding reply which allows you time on your return to deal with them.
3. Move out all the remaining emails over a week old. They are past their sell by date and if they are not, rest assured, someone will re-email you.

You should just be left with emails needing attention on your return. You could be bold and move these too into a folder ‘awaiting action’. Now you have an empty inbox. How does that feel? To keep the inbox clean and de-cluttered see item 4.

4. Set up rules to move automatically both essential and non-essential emails to folders eg newsletters, circulars, out of office messages, emails on which you are cc’d, etc. This also means that emails from key people are all in one place on your return and easy to find. Your inbox should then just contain important emails but un-planned for emails.
5. Set a safe and simple Out of Office message. Take care not to leave the door open to prying eyes and cyber criminals. You might be bold and suggest the sender re-sends any important emails on your return as all emails will be automatically deleted. Such a practice is far more common than you think.

Now go off and relax safe in the knowledge that you have taken adequate precautions to reduce a chronic attack of business email overload.

For more guidelines like these see Brilliant Email and Taking Control of Your Inbox (the latter is especially relevant for PAs and EAs who manage someone else’s inbox.

Tags: Brilliant Email, Clean Inbox, email free vacation, inbox zero, out of office message, Taking Control of Your Inbox, Vacation Email Overload

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