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Stay focused to stay productive : don’t be driven by email

Do you need to see each and every new email as it arrives?  Do all emails carry the same value and importance for you and how you perform your job?  No.  That is judging by the responses from over 200 delegates on various workshops Mesmo Consultancy has run over the past few weeks. Less than 3% of participants confessed that there really would be a problem if they did not see an email within twenty minutes of its arrival in their inbox.

Bearing in mind your inbox is a picture of you and the role you perform, there are obviously some of you who are more at the sharp end than others.  However, interestingly when pressed about who are these impatient and badly behaved senders, all bar one or two delegates confessed that it was an internal senior manager and not a customer/client who had such short email response time frames.

It would seem that by and large customers/clients actually do have a slightly longer fuse than we anticipate.  They expect to wait an hour or two for a reply.  They acknowledge that if it’s urgent a phone call might be better and that you as the recipient might not be at your inbox the minute they send their email.

So why do so many people let their days and life be dominated by the arrival of a new email – in some cases dropping an urgent task in favour of a new email?  Some possible explanations are:

• Instant gratification – dealing with emails is quicker and easier than writing a report etc.
• Email addiction – we need our fix little and very often.
• Poor time management skills – it’s hard to plan the day and stick to the plan.
• Strategic thinking is hard for many – it’s easier to think and behave tactically.
• The perception that people expect an instant reply – your behaviour influences other people’s behaviour.  If you always reply instantly, you create an image that you will always do so.

For those concerned that email addiction might be the cause, you can check yourself out using Mesmo Consultancy’s free email addiction benchmarking tool – click here to start.

For others here are our tip five tips to help you focus and stop being driven by email.

1. Switch off all those new email alerts (on all devices) and stay focused on the task in-hand for 20 to 30 minutes.  Then stop and take fives minutes out to check and deal with your email.
2. If the task in hand is very demanding and very important – disconnect completely.  Either use the Out-Of-Office message to manage expectations or delegate access to your inbox to someone else.
3. Tell those you work with that you have changed your email behavior and that if it’s urgent they should call you. Otherwise you will respond during the course of the day.
4. If you really must see certain emails immediately they arrive, use the rules function to alert you to these ones only.
5. Focusing can be hard – develop your skills to stay in the present and focused though techniques such as Mindfulness.

Tags: email addiction, email distractions, email response times, Mesmo Consultancy, Out of Office

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Books on my bedside table

In February and March a number of good books have been published.  Those on my desk include:

• It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, by Danah Boyd.  An insight into the world of the hyper connected youth of today and indeed tomorrow’s employees.
• Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds, by Carmin Gallo.  Especially compelling is the 18 minute rule and learning to wrap key information up as a memorable story.
• The Triple Package by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfield.  The key ingredients for success: a superiority complex, insecurity and impulse.  Not convinced about these qualities but it provides some food for thought about one’s strengths and weaknesses and how we operate at work and socially.
• Letters of Note, by Shaun Usher. A compilation of letters which demonstrate the power of the written word. Authors include the Queen to President Eisenhower and Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol.

What’s on your reading list?

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Small is beautiful for email signature blocks

A recurrent question with clients has been how much information to include in your email signature block (from company logos and awards to the full postal address).

Recently I received an email where the logos and awards included in the signature block amounted to nearly 35KB which was more than both the content and the attached Word file. Three emails like this and that’s a third of a MB of unwanted storage space. I diligently deleted all the offending images in order to keep my inbox slim. Overweight email signature blocks are one of my pet peeves!

What constitutes good email etiquette for an email signature block?  We are all looking to create a professional image which makes our email stand out in an ever crowded inbox. Including logos in an email means that you can:

• Impress clients with your awards;

• Reinforce your brand logo.

 However, the downsides are that such images:

• Add to the size of the email and hence take up more storage space.

• Mean the email takes longer to download (as its bigger than it needs to be and not everyone has access to superfast broadband).

• Are often seen as spam and cause important emails to be trapped and quarantined.

• Not always rendered properly and can look naff (given the range of devices people use to read their email).

The other aspect of the email signature block is how much information to include.  My other pet peeve is an email where the contact information is longer than the message itself.  One 11 line email had a 23 line block as the sign off (person’s title full contact details etc) and it is on every email entry. How to annoy the recipient very quickly.

Always include as a minimum a contact phone number. After three rounds of email ping-pong, the other person might want to phone you. They too are time poor and if they cannot see a phone number quickly and easily, they will default to email which is often unproductive for everyone (and especially if building a new relationship is involved).

Conversely, not everyone needs all your contact details ie address, fax, mobile etc. So don’t clutter up the email with unnecessary verbiage. Be selective. As default, use the minimum (ie name and phone number) and only insert your full details when asked.

Small is beautiful for email and is the best form of email etiquette. This means the minimum of size and content. A good website, not an email is the place to project your corporate image, company values etc and full postal address.

For more on corporate email etiquette and especially how to close an email see previous blogs and of course ‘Brilliant Email’.  If you still have any questions and need help, call us and ask about our Brilliant Email masterclasses.

What is your pet peeve?

Tags: corporate email etiquette, email best practice, email etiquette, Email signature block, Outlook

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Desktop Olympics – Guest Blog from BourneFit

One of the major side effects of email overload (and email addiction) is that we sit for hours at our desk which then impinges on our well-being.  In this month’s guest blog from Simon Lesser of BourneFit, Simon looks at the impact on our well-being and gives us some top tips to how to improve this and our work-life balance.

Working is a necessity, particularly working behind a computer for many of us. This may be a large part of the day often extending upwards of 6-8 hours allowing for the occasional tea and biscuit. Here are some top tips on improving posture daily and hence reducing chance of RSI, neck pain and round back posture.

There are a number of simple thing we can do but initially let’s look at what can happen…….

Shocking, and he’s supposed to be a fitness professional !

We can notice a number of things.

• Core – the abdominals are collapsed, all the weight is forwards forcing the ribs and the chest forward.
• Shoulders/arms – the keyboard is way forward and the arms/shoulders follow.
• Neck – possibly the worse part, the neck has to extend back in order to view the screen.

So let’s see what simple improvements can be made……

Much better!

• Core – sitting or perching lightly, further forward on the chair (or even sitting on an exercise ball) the core is slightly engaged.  The trunk is more upright.
• Shoulders/arms – the trick here is to have the shoulder in the back one third of the body.  In this case we also move the keyboard closer to encourage this.
• Neck – crown lifting up towards the ceiling.  Having the screen raised can often help.

Maintaining your well-being (in-spite of email overload)

• Practise – awareness is the key.  Have an awareness of where the body is all the way down to what the feet are doing on the floor.  Have a proper ergonomic assessment if necessary.
• Driving – the second biggest postural problem.  Much of the above can be applied to driving particularly where the shoulders are.  Again, awareness is the key.
• Outside work – see a fitness professional for some postural exercises, even taking cardio exercise regularly can massively help posture.  Classes like yoga and pilates are fantastic even once a week.

About Simon Lesser and BourneFit

Simon Lesser is founder and owner of BourneFit a Bournemouth based  fitness and sport therapy business.  For more information click visit the BourneFit website.  There you will also information of healthy eating and other ways to improve your well-being and maintain a good work-life balance.

Tags: BourneFit, email addiction, email overload, Simon Lesser, well being

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Creating a More Effective Email Communications Culture: Guest blog by David Grossman

In the final part of this series of interview with David Grossman, he reviews what are the barriers and drivers to creating a more effective email communications culture.

Monica: What do you see as the principle issues restricting the use of email within organizations?

David: Limiting email and reducing abuses is a step in the right direction, especially for middle managers.

We conducted research of 1,100 executives, senior leaders, managers, and employees on their perceptions of e-mail.

David Grossman CEO the Grossman Group

Our 2012 email perception study, “Enough Already! Stop Bad Email,” shows that when it comes to email overload, it’s the middle managers who feel the most pain:

• Middle managers typically spend 100 hours (6,000 minutes) a year on irrelevant email
• They are 50 percent more likely to access work email outside of normal business hours
• 30 percent experience work-life balance issues
• 20 percent fear missing relevant information
• 21 percent experience stress

And yet, they don’t want their ability to use email taken away or even interrupted.  83 percent of middle managers agree that email is an effective and necessary communication tool, and only 15 percent said that limiting email during normal business hours would be very effective. Our research suggests that to melt the iceberg that is the “Frozen Middle,” companies need to do a few things:

• realize that the responsibility to improve is at the individual and organizational levels
• agree on email expectations and get leadership in board
• promote e-tiquette to reduce overload

All that said, limiting email and stopping abuses isn’t the ultimate solution to improving employee engagement, work-life balance, and productivity. Really, it’s a Band-Aid because the much larger issue is about ineffective communications inside organizations today, which is negatively affecting business results.  That means leadership needs to assess and improve the overall communication system for the organization.

Monica: How can we improve this situation – top three tips.

David:

1. First, determine whether email is the right communication tool: As you assess whether email is the right vehicle, consider its limitations and your strategy for getting feedback. Use email when you need to provide one or multiple audiences with a brief status update in the body of a message, deliver a longer message or information as an attachment to your intended receivers, or prompt the receiver(s) to view web-based content or other content that’s attached. Don’t use email to give bad news or to give complex, detailed or lengthy information or instructions.
2. Commit to using email more effectively oneself: I’m a believer that the number of emails one receives is proportional to the number of emails one sends. Before you send, ask yourself, “Should my message be communicated face-to-face or voice-to-voice instead?” Make sure your email is relevant, and ask “Is the information pertinent to my recipient? Do they really need to read my message?”
3. Coach others when they’re not using email effectively: Could people in your organization benefit from picking up the phone instead of using email? Are their emails lacking necessary context or calls to action? Coach them. When you commit to using email more effectively and help others do the same, you can not only take steps to conquering email overload, but also improve the flow of communication within your entire organization.

For more information on email overload, its effects on the frozen middle, and additional tips, visit our Email Research and Resource Center.

David Grossman, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA helps leaders drive productivity and get the results they want through authentic and courageous leadership communication, a sought-after speaker and advisor to Fortune 500 leaders. A two-time author, David is CEO of The Grossman Group, an award-winning Chicago-based strategic leadership development and internal communication consultancy; clients include: DuPont Pioneer, Lockheed Martin, McDonald’s, Motel 6 and Tyco, to name a few.

Tags: Clean Inbox, clean out your inbox week, corporate email etiquette, David Grossman, email communications, email overload, The Grossman Group

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