Productivity and e-mail

September 25, 2005

From the Kiplinger Letter this week:

Here’s an easy productivity booster: Make e-mails clearer.
Employees lose up to an hour a day deciphering confusing messages from bosses and colleagues. Encourage employees, especially managers, to be as careful writing e-mails as they would be writing formal memos.

Dashing off an e-mail is just too easy. Unless you are one of those few who can mentally compose and organize your communications without editing, e-mails often look like they have been written by uneducated idiots.

Which many of us are, come to think of it, but I won’t go there.

I recently finished reading the World War II memoirs of Winston S. Churchill, Great Britain’s head of state during that war. He didn’t have much truck with telephone communication, and he dictated voluminous minutes (memos) to convey his thoughts to others. I don’t know whether they ever were edited before being sent, but they are masterpieces - clear and concise expositions of Churchill’s thinking on many issues.

I’m no Churchill, and I suspect that neither are you, but I will argue that we should spend a little extra time editing what we write. I think Kiplinger’s thoughts on e-mails and productivity are pretty valid.

Dave, still stumbling over his words

Posted by Dave | Filed Under Technology