That seems crazy. Honestly, mail is my main communication medium exactly _because_ you cannot see when I read the message and because of the implied asynchronous exchange.
If the person on the other end is feeling anxious about that exchange I
a) have no sympathies, none at all
b) feel that they don't understand the medium they're using (as confirmed by the "I could always pick up the phone" line at the end of the article)
I'm trying hard to suppress a "Booohoooo" reply here. Persons that concerned about exchanges (and IMs make this that much harder - I see so many passive aggressive "And?"/"You read it, what do you think?" messages around me, because people assume that "Saw the message" equals "Has time and incentives to answer me right this very moment") need to see a doctor. If you can describe this as anxiety, you might need help.
My team adheres to a common set of communication practices. It's part of the Employee Handbook that all new hires into my department are required to read and sign. A summary:
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Email Sender:
- If you need an answer urgently ("urgent" defined as one of two things: it's an emergency, or the information you are lacking is a blocker for what you are currently working on), either pick up the phone and call the other party or send them an IM, instead of emailing them.
- Keep your emails concise and to-the-point. No essays.
- Don't mark your emails as "High Importance" or ask for a read receipt. We treat all emails as high importance, and you can feel assured that your email will be read within 4 hours max (see below).
Email Recipient:
- Read all incoming emails within 4 hours max and respond after reading if possible. If you don't have the information the sender is asking for, or are otherwise not ready for a full response, send a short one indicating that a) you read their email and b) you will respond within X hours, where X is a number that is equal to or less than 24.
- If the response is complex, summarize it as best as you can, and indicate that you will follow up in person or via phone to discuss the details. Don't write an essay back.
--
The purpose behind these set of rules is alignment of expectations for both parties. Ever since we implemented them, the vast portion of our "friction" with regards to team communication has disappeared. For example, it's really, really nice to never have to wonder if someone has read your email, and also really nice to know when you can expect a response (which means you can decide whether you want to wait for a response or work on something else in the meantime).
We also have a set of rules for IM (we use Slack) and phone, but those mostly say "be online and available, or mark yourself as Away or Busy as appropriate and people will respect it".
>If you need an answer urgently ("urgent" defined as one of two things: it's an emergency, or the information you are lacking is a blocker for what you are currently working on), either pick up the phone and call the other party or send them an IM, instead of emailing them.
I have a rule for my coworkers: I'm not available on IM. Either email me (if not urgent) or call (if urgent). IM is the worst of both worlds, where people can contact you instantly, expect instant responses, and not feel bad about not responding to your response.
With a phone call, they cannot call me, and then stop talking in the middle of a conversation. With IM, they can.
(Of course, I still use IM to communicate stuff like URLs, etc when on the phone).
> We treat all emails as high importance, and you can feel assured that your email will be read within 4 hours max (see below).
If they need me to respond within 4 hours, they should call me.
As for the essay-length response, I want to let you know I received your comment. It deserves a longer response and I hope to get that to you by the end of day Monday. Let me know if that doesn't work for you.
> occasionally a comprehensive reply requires an essay, or the equivalent.
Use a bulleted list or a diagram.
One of the worst e-mails I ever saw was about lifecycle of a token for PCI compliance, just a solid screen of words. My colleague who received it sat for an entire afternoon to parse it and drew a UML activity diagram from it, which he sent back to the mailing list to rapturous thanks. The original sender received only scorn, even though the was the 'authority' on the issue.
If the person on the other end is feeling anxious about that exchange I
a) have no sympathies, none at all
b) feel that they don't understand the medium they're using (as confirmed by the "I could always pick up the phone" line at the end of the article)
I'm trying hard to suppress a "Booohoooo" reply here. Persons that concerned about exchanges (and IMs make this that much harder - I see so many passive aggressive "And?"/"You read it, what do you think?" messages around me, because people assume that "Saw the message" equals "Has time and incentives to answer me right this very moment") need to see a doctor. If you can describe this as anxiety, you might need help.