Organizational Drag Fix: Emails

If you read my article the other week, I am a big fan of looking for ways to reduce organizational drag.  In the corporate world, one of the most obvious and easiest to address is making sure you’re doing email right.  And if you’re sending an email with more than five recipients, you’re probably doing it wrong. 

Of course there are exceptions – e.g., routine reports that need to be send out to multiple groups – but it’s too easy to be lazy with email and just copy anyone and everyone.  Doing this has the potential to waste a lot of people’s time needlessly.  Before sending any email we all need to have the discipline to ask ourselves who should be part of the email (either because there is a specific item that is address to them / their area, or they are likely to have an opinion on what’s being discussed), versus those that just needs to know as an FYI.  The latter should only get the email as a forward from you with a brief summary. 

I am a firm believer that part of what my company pays for is for me to make everyone else’s jobs a little bit easier.  And for me that includes having the discipline to have only the right people on each email.  It is an ingrained habit that before hitting send on any email I will check who all has been copied (to make sure the right people are on the chain).  As important as it is to add people into the conversation who need to be aware, it is important to remove those that don’t need to be.  If I receive an email that I am responding to which I believe has unnecessary people copied, I am a fan of removing those that don’t need to be included.  I will always be transparent about it and include a comment to the effect of, “I am removing [Mary and John] to prevent spamming their inboxes”.

I must also advocate that there are only really rare instances that you send an email to multiple groups asking for feedback.  If you need feedback from five different groups asking for responses, take the time and send five different emails.  It makes the whole process cleaner, easier for future audit purposes, and is less of a time burglar for all involved.  Not to mention if you are collating responses from multiple departments (e.g., for a business case, or a new initiative risk assessment) you really should be using an online-collaboration tool like OneDrive rather than email.

One of the biggest faux-pas I see with email is sending an email response that just says “+ [colleague]” with no context nor further comments.  This wastes everyone’s time reading and deleting an email that has no value.  If it’s because they need to be involved, explain why.  If it’s because they need to opine, explain why.  If it’s because they are the decision maker, say so.  Because the other issue is that for the person you’ve copied, sending them an email and expecting them to read through the entire chain to get up to speed is just plain lazy on your part.  Instead, forward them the email and include a summary to get them caught up.  If that doesn’t work for whatever reason, at least have the courtesy to explain why the person should be included for everyone else’s benefit (e.g., ‘[colleague] should be copied given they are responsible for [XYZ] and need to be kept in the loop for [ABC reason]’).  And hey, it’ll help you out as next time they will include the person automatically and you won’t need to spend the time doing it. 

When you have an email with 20 people on it, and there’s been a back and forth of five emails, that each take two minutes to read and understand the implications, that’s 200 minutes of wasted time for the company.   Instead, you should take the extra time and care to send emails with only the details relevant to that person / team, even if that means sending multiple emails. 

Thoughts and opinions are purely my own, no ChatGPT here.  The above is just a brief conceptual summary, for more specific details, feel free to use ChatGPT.  I’d suggest a prompt along the lines of:

Are there any tools that I can install in my email application to remind me to check each email before I send that the recipient list is complete and suitable to make sure only the right people are included on each email I send?  If no, are there any tips you can recommend to help me in implementing this habit?