Surface Ripples

Effective Email Management

“I spent all afternoon sorting out my email”

“I can’t get on top of my email”

“X Department seem to think that we all sit around waiting for emails from them”

I hear complaints like these from many of my clients. Email is great for communicating, but it can also be the bane of our life. It lets us reach out quickly to literally thousands of people – and if we’re doing it, so are others.

Newsletters, requests for meetings, useful information that may be needed in the future, “urgent” (to the sender, anyway) messages, updates, reports all flood into our “Inbox” and we find ourselves “drowning” in cyber paper – especially when we get back from a day out of the office.

I recently looked at the emails that I received over a period of several days and categorised them by High/Medium/Low priority and by the action that I took according to the “Four Ds” (Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete). The results were in terms of priority:

• 5% were High;
• 14% were Medium;
• 80% were Low or Irrelevant.

This is an exact illustration of Pareto’s 80/20 principle – 20% of the emails I received were medium/high in importance, but 80% were of low importance or irrelevant.

When I looked at the action taken on the emails, I:

• Deleted 47%;
• Deferred/Filed 32%;
• Actioned (Did) 21%.

Again, just under 80% of my emails could be deleted or deferred/filed, whilst only just over 20% required action.

The trick is finding the 20% of emails that will bring you 80% of your rewards (and on which you should therefore spend 80% of your time).

A great approach is to look at your “inbox” a maximum of four times a day and sort its contents into “Action”, “Read Later” and “Maybe” folders. It takes discipline (as I have found) to sort things, and it takes experience to be able to tell the difference between the “Read Laters” and “Maybes”. However, like so many skills, the more you practice, the easier it becomes. By sorting things out, you’re then left with a folder of what needs to be done as soon as possible, a folder of emails to be read “when you have time” and a folder of emails to be read “if you have the time”. Your priorities have been set.

One folder that I have added is a “Keep In View” or “KIV” folder for all those emails I send out to which I expect a response, to follow up or on which someone has to take action. I look at this ONCE ONLY each day and transfer items from this into the “Action” folder as needed. It’s a great way of making sure that I follow up what needs to be followed up (and leaves others wondering how I do it).

A final tip: use the “auto-delete” and “archive” functions on your email. In some companies, the system will delete emails after 3 months, so if you need to keep something for longer, put it in a specially designated folder or save any relevant attachments to your hard drive or server.

I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.

Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Productivity

posted by William Martin @ 17:19