AVOID OPEN-ENDED EMAILS IF YOU WANT AN ACTION RESULT – Best Practice #2

Posted on June 4, 2010, 1:20 am, by admin, under Best Practices, linkedin.

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Email Best Practices Or … ask open-ended questions and you’ll get open-ended answers.

Here’s an example of something we see all the time. Dan wants to help Peter promote his project idea. Dan sends an email to Janice and Ed to garner support, and has cc’d Peter.

The open-ended approach

Open-ended email thread

And on and on … eight emails and several days later, Dan still doesn’t have a date for a simple meeting.

The time-to-take-action approach

In contrast, suppose Dan had instead written:

Time to take action email

A few reasons why I think this is better:

  • Dan assumed everyone would likely want to meet, so took the small chance to skip the request for buy-in (thereby saving both emails and time).

  • Dan knew the next step was setting up the meeting and anticipated all the meeting logistics – even that Peter might be wondering who would chair.

  • Dan made it easy for each recipient to reply. All they had to do was check their calendar – clearly an email they could handle within a minute or so (increasing the chances it would get answered quickly).

Too obvious?

In theory, yes. But for whatever reason open-ended emails are too common in practice.

I don’t mean to suggest we should take the lead on everything – we’d appear too pushy. However, it’s easy to see how taking a moment to anticipate what the next step or response might be would eliminate many emails (good) and minimize costly time delays (even better).
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