A Company Email Manifesto
How I learned to love getting company emails again!
I have spent the greater part of my adult life in email hell. Every company I have been at has produced ridiculous amounts of email. This plethora of email has all been in the name of productivity and keeping people informed. For a long time I took the amount of email coming in as a badge of success and honor. In reality I was a slave to my inbox and found myself dreading emails. Most importantly I did not feel more productive or informed — just stressed.
As I look back my stress over email was not from the medium but rather the company’s social expectations. Email is so easy to create now, that we have switched the work load from the producer to the consumer of emails something completely opposite from all other systems.
That realization has caused me to come up with an email manifesto that aims to change the social expectations so people feel more informed, productive and less stressed. Below is what we use at our company now and I thought others might gain from this.
The Company Email Manifesto!
Email is a powerful communication tool and as companies get bigger an increasingly needed tool. Unfortunately it quickly becomes a thing people spend their time managing rather than being more informed and productive. I submit this is caused by 5 types of bad emails: the random conversation thread, the lost commenting thread, the jerk email, the tasking email,and the thesis email.
I propose the following social contract:
- Random conversation - Never email more than 5 people using To or CC, always BCC. You don’t have a conversation with 50 people so don’t try it over email.
- Lost commenting - Email is a bad commenting tool. Only reply to the first message’s content and not others in the thread, it is too easy to get this screwed up and lose peoples thoughts. Let the original author summarize peoples comments at the end.
- The Jerk - Never criticize in email, talk to the person. Its too easy to be taken the wrong way. It is harder to criticize someone to their face so don’t hide behind email if you’re a jerk.
- The tasking - Never assign a task to someone in email. If you want them to do something talk to them in person (skype, phone, hangout, etc), its the only way to get priorities right. Don’t assume you can just interject you needs onto someone without asking them, even if your the boss.
- The Thesis - Try for short emails, if you need a longer one put a quick one line summary so they know what its about without having to reading it all. People are busy, respect their time by making them informed without costing them time.
Does It Work?
I have no idea if this will work as we scale up or if it will work for others. I do feel like my inbox is informative. I have not had anyone complain to me about someone’s email. Lastly, people seem to talk more about tasks. All these are good signs for keeping email as a healthy communication channel.
