E-mail: Business Communication Key to Credibility and Advancement

Email - the mostly widely used and most widely abused medium of communication at the office. However, with some tips below you will be able to be a smart business communicator and use this medium to advance yourself and your projects. This document will cover the does and donts in addition to language and structure of your e-mails.

Most importantly keep your e-mails to the point and pick the correct audience.

E-mail Title

This is very important as everyone gets snowballed with e-mails and will only read ones that seem important.

If there is a deadline it needs to be in the title.

If action needs to be taken it summary needs to be in the title.

The project needs to be in the title as well.

Ex.

Project: Testing required by 05/10/09, Getting ready for deployment on Date

Summary/ overview - capture the point

The most important in getting people to listen is giving them the information in concise to the point sentences. Start your e-mail with a topic sentence or paragraph stating what the point is and who needs to take action. Label this section Summary or overview to zoom in your reader.

Ex.

All,

Summary

Tesing for program X needs to be completed by Date.

Teams X, Y, Z need to

Ex. 2

Please find attached the document summarizing our discussion of Project X on Date.

Business reason sentence or two - What's the point and why should I care?

So you have stated that you want things to happen. Here use a sentence to explain why your audience should care. Align their objectives with yours and justify them with a sprinkling of business logic.

Ex.

Firm X and its colleagues are creating a consortium of tools to aid in managing risk in the current markets. Our teams are involved in first line support and development for these efforts. The successful completion of items A, B and C align with our team' objective to...

Categorized list of items that need to get done, their owners and ETAs

Create headers in bold for the themes of the project.

Then put together bullets of one sentence items that need to get done.

If these items are beyond planning attach the owner's names in bold or italic and the tentative dates associated with the action item.

If things are late bring attention to them by a different color (don't go crazy here, keep to a standard).

If things are really late call out the people responsible first personally then in the general e-mail that their managers see.

End with a thank you or a recap of your first sentence

Selecting the audience for your e-mail is very important. Does Joe Shmoe need to do something? Should the e-mail only go to Joe or to his manager too who wants to be in the loop and will probably yell at you or Joe in the future for not looping her in? Or is this too low level to flood management with e-mail at this point. These are all judgment calls you will have to make.

First e-mail

If the project is multi team:

Make sure that people in all teams are aware of the actions, work items that are going on. This does not necessarily mean you have to cc everyone every time. This may be better addressed through a summary e-mail lets say once a week. This will help keep the project transparent, remove different teams from doing the same work, give credit where credit is due.

If the project requires multi person effort

Lets say only one person actually needs to get things done. Make sure to CC the other people involved so they too can see her response. This eliminates you from being the middle man and getting involved in he said she said. Once again this increases transparency and removes your work load.

If things are not getting done

E-mail the person, team involved, CC their management. The management will see the string of e-mails where you have asked the person over and over and over again to do action x. DO NOT be mean in any case, be assertive. This makes you look professional and that you are managing the project and getting things done instead of blaming others for not getting things done.

If there is a run away train/ fire storm how can I stop it?

DO NOT respond to an e-mail where there is already a fire if you are trying to put it out. Since the fire may have been caused by some statement, item not relative to the initial point of the e-mail. If this is the case your task is to put out fire B, but you are putting water on perfectly happy A which is just getting soggy wet and at this point annoyed. Now you have a fire B, and an annoyed previously happy A.

Do

Re-title the e-mail to address B

Adhere to structure.

Keep your audience to only those involved.

Clearly explain the resolution.

In this case you may want to run the e-mail by your manager and let him send it our if in your company creed and status are looked highly upon.

Hope this helps. These are all tried and true tactics learned first hand by working as a project manager with lots of different teams and personalities. The putting out fires advice I learned first hand and although everything was rolled out smoothly it was a day full of egos and yelling and being taken to the "Principles Office" with the Director. But all that said I have received a promotion to Associate and my credibility is rising amongst my colleagues. Let me know if you have questions.

Take your anger out in an e-mail. Why? E-mail can be saved for 5 years at a company, and your written word can and will be used against you, so use your words wisely. If you need to "politely convince the other person that they are wrong" do it in a phone call. Spoken words do not have a record and they are not heard by the other 10 people CCd on the e-mail that can then bring it up for the next 5 years.

In a business context use proper business language and check your grammar. This makes you sound professional. Do not use language you would use with your buddy in an IM. Especially when higher management is involved and you are not just discussing the next lunch outing with your team.

In the case of egos flaring up in an e-mail do not respond without thinking how to best strategically put out the fire as this will most likely flare it even more and all your soothing wise words will fall on deaf ears of angry managers that are trying to show each other that they have the upper hand. We will get to putting out fires later in this document.

Do not forget to thank the people that are doing work for you. So you've mastered all the techniques to get people working and motivated. However, their motivation will dwindle if you only communicate to them when you want something. It is a one way relationship that will end very quickly.

Do not bother and banter people about everything. Yes you have ten gazzilion people yelling at you to get things done. You have 50 million fires to put out. The only way you will handle them all is by being organized, taking the time to understand the issues and pressing the right people backed by the right knowledge on the right issues. This will make you look like you understand what you are doing and why instead of an annoying nuisance that is running like a chicken with its head cut of that does not really understand anything.