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<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\nThis is the second article in a series about keeping work in its place<\/b>.<\/p>\n
I
\n distinctly remember crossing the point in my life where a boss answered
\n an email of mine in less than 5 minutes. I had sent a difficult
\nquestion.<\/p>\n
I stepped back from my computer.<\/p>\n
Uh-oh. Hallmark of a bad decision. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve
\n seen them before; bosses who give you the quick, flippant answer and
\nact annoyed that you asked such a simple question. I\u2019ve found myself 6
\nmonths later with that same flippant boss, after massive problems, with
\nhim looking at me and pleadingly \u201cWhy did we decide to do it that way?<\/i>\u201d <\/p>\n
Heather learned that day to note why<\/i> a boss decided what they did.<\/p>\n
Difficult I For example, OK, back to the story. I actually wrote him back. \u201cHow dare you answer me so quickly? You haven\u2019t thought about this long enough. You can\u2019t handle the truth!<\/b>\u201d* <\/p>\n (*Not my actual email, but for sure<\/i> my thoughts.)<\/p>\n It I would go on to What First, WHOA!<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Because when we see people hurting others, we first isolate them to stop the damage.<\/p>\n If there are that many unread emails and people depend on you, you are hurting them.<\/p>\n You are hurting your direct reports\/individual contributors who have emails in that pile that:<\/p>\n You probably have emails from your bosses that:<\/p>\n Here is the problem, though. It’s not the content inside those 1,000 emails now that bothers me. It is that you didn’t care <\/b>to manage your email better. <\/p>\n At work, we use a nice term, time management<\/b>. But time management is, essentially, self-control<\/b>. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Get some. Use it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Role up your sleeves and make some hard decisions. Every time I have found someone with this many unread messages, there is a self-control problem<\/b>. Yes, even you Miss But I’m So Important That I Must Read Every Email.<\/p>\n Unsubscribe. <\/p>\n Oh, but Heather, I route those into a junk email, so it’s OK. <\/p>\n No it’s not. Because…on whose time are you checking your junk email?<\/i> <\/p>\n Work time? Nope. I will not support that. I’ve looked at the content and that newsletter is not that<\/i> important. <\/p>\n On No one ever states that reading their own junk email account is satisfying. Stop it. Unsubscribe.<\/p>\n Wrong.<\/p>\n Treating your email inbox like buried treasure is wrong. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Emails Those actions can be:<\/p>\n Email Still What Please. Hire Puh-lease. Leaders: What you say and how fast you It is always OK to respond initially with:<\/p>\n Managing your messaging is part of your self-control.<\/p>\n Next article will be: I’m Going Camping!<\/p>\n
\n decisions made quickly is the recipe for a bad decision. When I had my
\nuh-oh moment, I was mid-level management. So that means that I had
\nindividual contributors\/direct reports that worked on my team and then I
\n worked on a team of managers with my boss. As such, I was a filter<\/b>. I passed communication both ways but not all of the communication.<\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n stop problems that do not need to be escalated. The system is designed
\nthat each level stops 90% of the problems and only the toughest 10% of
\nproblems that are escalated to the next higher level.<\/p>\n
\n my Individual Contributors were faculty (READ: teachers) and they
\nstopped 90% of the problems with students (unfair grading, exams too
\ndifficult, extension of deadlines). But the toughest 10% of their
\nproblems should be passed to me as their boss. I go to work on those
\nproblems. The toughest 10% of my problems go to my boss. As such, the
\nupper echelons of an organization should be tasked with working on the
\nvery toughest of problems. They should not be “in the weeds” with
\ntrivial problems. If leadership is too caught up with small issues,
\nsomething is wrong with their focus.<\/p>\n
\n sounds trite but I don\u2019t ask my bosses easy questions. If it was easy,
\nI\u2019d have figured it out myself. I send my bosses hard questions. They
\nneed to take time to think about it, to consider, to weigh the pros and
\ncons to the decision. If I’m going to put their decision into play, I
\nneed to defend it. I need to know that the strengths and weaknesses
\nhave been acknowledged and a decision was still made. (Side note: FYI:
\nthat’s the hallmark of a good judicial decision. There needs to be
\nevidence of a consideration of multiple opposing viewpoints. There is a
\n reason that we listen to “dissenting opinions”. Judges WILL TOSS OUT
\ndecisions that appear frivolous and flippant.)<\/p>\n
\nuse email response time to judge every boss I\u2019ve had since. Too fast
\nequals bad. If you are slow with communication, I could be impressed.<\/i> But I’m not done observing.<\/p>\nI have 1,000 unread emails in my inbox<\/h3>\n
\n if you are a boss that takes so long to reply that you have 1,000
\nunread emails in your inbox? You might want to stop reading now because
\nI’m about to get rough. But if you are a leader-wannabe, read on.<\/p>\n
\n if you have any email inbox with 1,000 unread messages, you should be
\nimmediately removed from any position of leadership and demoted<\/b> to Individual Contributor.<\/p>\n\n
\n
Newsletters\/Auto senders<\/h3>\n
\n your time? No. Not a good idea. You are seriously going to peel off
\nsome dedicated down time to do “quasi-work”. That indicates a problem
\nwith priorities. You cannot figure out the difference between work and
\nnon-work. You cannot decide what is important so you are making all of
\nit all important. It is not all important. What is important is so
\nnarrow, you should be relieved to find it. <\/p>\nBut I found that one piece so information, so I can’t read\/sort\/delete! <\/h3>\n
\n and messengers are communication devices, not libraries or vaults.
\nCommunication is meant to eventually cause action within a brief period
\nof time. So each incoming email is asking you to do something. When you
\nhaven’t read or deleted the email, you have not done any action.<\/p>\n\n
\n & messaging software is cluing into this and starting to link your
\nemail’s information to its proper place. For example: Notice how your
\nflight itinerary becomes a calendar item within the Google ecosystem?
\nThat’s good. It should go there. The moral of the story here is that the
\n correct data goes into the correct channel.<\/p>\n
\n think that email newsletter is “too precious” because some little
\nnugget comes along once in a great while? Go to the source. If that
\ninformation is so precious, the source should be archiving it in a
\nsearchable way. If the information is not archived, the information is
\nnot so precious. Get it OUT of your email.<\/p>\nBut wait, I really do get 1,000 emails a day<\/h3>\n
\n if you are a boss that has an email account publicly advertised (like a
\n company president) and you get TONS of legitimate emails so there
\nactually are this many unread emails in your inbox?<\/p>\n
\nsomeone to read and answer emails for you. No company president worth
\ntheir salt thinks that ignoring their internal and external clients is
\ngood business.<\/p>\nI don’t trust someone else to be in my work email inbox<\/h3>\n
\n It’s work email. Don’t you know every boss and IT person is in there?
\n Sit up straight with your work messaging. Don’t want me to see it?
\nDon’t do it. Easy peasy.<\/p>\n
\nsay it reflects on you as a leader. Take more time to answer an email.
\n More time = allowing wisdom to kick in.<\/p>\n\n