E-Mail "Best Practices in the Work Place

Please share some of your email "Best Practices" or email "Core Competencies".

I am one of the most serious offenders of poor email styles. My problem? I like to hear myself write.

After 28 years of talking with software, visualizing what I want to create and communicating in 1's and 0's, my verbal communication skills have shriveled up to "Hi...gotta go code now...". I have 528 words allocated to me daily for verbal use.

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Here are my TOP 3 EMAIL "BEST PRACTICES":

1. "No Scroll Bar" rule. If the scroll bar shows up while composing an email, you might as well throw it away now and start over. Your boss is not going to read it. His or her patience is 1 short paragraph long. Scroll bar? Guaranteed: your email is overwhelming and probably not important.

• This is my new rule for controlling my love for watching myself type on and on and on....
• Sometimes short is too short: My friend Ted drives me crazy on short emails like:
• 
  --> "Jim. call me. Not important."
  --> "Dow: what's wrong with you? Coffee some time."
  --> "Jim. Graphic Designers want noses on smiley characters: your emails. Can't read emails until you fix.."

2. Only use the subject line if possible and terminate the subject with (end of message). This is a good tip from the Stephen Covey & Franklin folks.

• I prefer to start with "" then terminate the subject with "" -- it makes me feel more validated.
• It's more fun to make up new subject line terminaters; really freaking people out on what the acronymns might mean and where I am physcially as I send these emails: WFH (working from home), NLH (never left home), etc...

3. Please no Slang. This is fine in the work place when you are communicating in person. But very dangerous in email. This really happened to me and made me feel very old. I sent a meeting request to a younger work mate. I got back a response "I'm Down With That!".

• I was rather anxious that my young peer was down on meeting that day.
• Then he called me up later and wondered why I was not at the meeting that I invited him to.
• I was so embarrassed. I thought he was "Down On That"...not "Down With That".

"I'm Jiggy-With-It" was so much easier to understand. But my 26 year old daughter won't let me use that anymore: "That's soo 80's, Dad...you are an embarrassment!!".

Sticks & Stones May Break My Bones...

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!".

Do you remember that school ground mantra? I remember using that a few times. How I felt inside was much different, "Words hurt much more than sticks and stones..."; at least, it can take much longer to heal from the hurt of intentional or careless choice of words. Sometimes, no words, a total absence of communication can even be worse, "You don't even exist. You are not even worth my time to tell you how meaningless you are".

So, how does this relate to the work place and to employers?

First of all, there are a lot of thoughless phrases being thrown around the corporate world these days. Worst still, in some cases, these phrases send the message, "we don't care about you at all...you are a non-being...we only value your intellectual assets as property." I already covered this in a prior blog, but these are the phrases:

• "Human Supply Chain Management"
• "Human Asset Management"
• "Human Assets ROI"
• etc.....

Recently, I re-read Stephen R. Covey's book "7 Habbits of Highly Effective People". Covey tells a story about a verbal exchange he had with an executive attending one of his training classes. This person was complaining about how difficult it was to find good employees and criticizing past employee behavior. I am paraphrasing here because I don't have that chapter in front of me, but

Covey picked up right away on an attitude issue. He asked this executive how his company treats customers. Of course, the executive hit all the right points on successful customer relations. Covey replied (paraphrased), "Try treating your employees like you do your customers and I bet you start having good employees".

As I read this chapter from Covey, I relived some horrifying experiences in my work historty -- words thrown at me (or total ignoring and marginalizing my worth as an employee) from a manager. "Jim, I don't have time for high maintenance employees (the biggest insult one could throw at me)", "..you better develop some thick skin..we don't have time for any hand-holding here."

Whether it is the new marketing mantras coming out of HR or Vendor software companies or fast-lane companies and investors looking for a quick and cheap ROI, companies better starting changing the words and the message. People are not capital assets. People are intellect, emotion, physical and spiritual. True, the work place is an exchange of dollars for employee talent/skils; however, if companies want their employees at peak performance they better start showing a real understanding of and respecting people's basic needs.

Why do companies understand that a term like "Customer Relationship Management" feels pretty good -- they want to build some positive emotion around the marketing? But, seems like little thought goes into term like "Human Asset Capital Management".

For me, I would rather be a customer of most companies these days. In fact, this is what is going to happen soon. The next generation is not going to accept the arbitrary seperation of intellectual assets and social needs, emotional needs; they will create their own work cultures. They will treat employees with respect. They will treat vendors with respect. They will demand respect as customers to the few corporate dinasours left around.

Fortunately for me, I stumbled into working for a company right now that really understands the power of communication, the power of message and how to motivate and retain good people. Interesting to me: the founders are both women. I don't want to stereotype, but there is an awful lot of "good-ole-boy", macho shit still stinking up the corporate world.

Through my experiences of the past, I try very hard to "walk the talk". People are important to me: my fellow employees, boss, janitor at work and clerk in my neighborhood Plaid Pantry store. In the past, I think I was guilty of the worst insult and worst hurt --- no words, no acknowledgement of the people around me who have needs that I can fill. A simple, positive word may be all the validation someone needs from me.