How to write more effectively and get your message across
Ok, I know what you are thinking. E-mail is probably one of the worst tools one could think of to communicate effectively. However, if you have a multinational team like me, where team members are all in different time zones, it is inevitable that a lot of the communication will need to be done through e-mails.
I am a firm believer that if done right, e-mail can still be a very powerful tool to get your message across. Here I will share with you a bad e-mail I made up, received from my imaginary boss, Peter. I will use it as an example, and how you could make it better with a few tricks.
Hi Claire,
I’m going to be on a plane Thursday night. Since I’m in HK, let’s try to reschedule our meeting some time more convenient.
Perhaps we can catch up after my meeting with John in the morning, I think I’m open around 10:30.
Also for our meeting with the analytics team on Friday night, can you check with Finance if they still need it? James will be on leave so he won’t be able to attend. If he’s not there, then we will only get a local perspective without the global view. I think I’d rather not have it, but if they think they still need it, then we can keep. It just means we might need to be prepared to have another follow up meeting, which I would really want to avoid.
Also, how are you going with the commercialization work on the machine learning model? I like the summary you shared. I think there is an interesting opportunity to use the model for a customer or segment view. As we explore that in more detail we should also continue the conversation about the potential “conduct” risk that we might open up.
Let’s get a good, clear set of actions here. Would be good to check in maybe 3–4 weeks from now just to ensure the details are falling in to place.
Peter
Plan your key message
The most common cause of confusing e-mails is that most people treat it as an “on-the-go” tool. They write it as if they are speaking, and they are “thinking-out-loud” with their e-mails.
Most of the times, the e-mails are unclear, simply because the senders haven’t quite made up their mind on what they want to do yet. Imagine, if you don’t know what you want to do, how do you expect the recipients to figure it out by following your fragmented thoughts here and there? What typically happens next are subsequent e-mails sent from the recipients, trying to get clarification. This is how you end up with back-and-forth e-mails which could have been avoided if you spend some time clearing up your mind and tell people exactly what it is that you want.
I would recommend before writing your e-mail, take some time to think about what is it you are hoping to achieve. Do you want to convince someone of something? Do you want to have a follow-up meeting? or is it simply an FYI.
I would also recommend not to send e-mails whenever ideas hit you. Let it sit in a bit. Because if you are like me, then very likely next second when another idea hits you, you would change your mind. E-mails are not the best tool if you just want to have an open discussion, leave that to IM, Slack or Jabber.
Provide clear actionable next step
Once you know what you want, you need to make sure the same message gets delivered to your recipients, too. Sentences like “I think it would be good if we do …”, or “maybe we should have a follow-up meeting on this” is not good. It is very ambiguous, and if you send the e-mail to several people, no one knows who should take action on it. In addition, it leaves a lot of room for people to interpret the message in ways that you did not intend for.
I would suggest if you want something to happen, be clear about the below:
- Who is the action owner
- What is the outcome you are expecting
- By what time frame do you expect this to happen
If you want to avoid being accused of being a dictator, I would also suggest you provide the task owner with a “why”. It is easier for people to have some context, so they understand why they are carrying out certain tasks than just being given an order.
Make it short
I’m not sure about you guys, for me, there is an inverse relationship between long e-mails and my willingness to read it. It might be a millennial problem, but let’s face it, most people you will be working with these days are millennials. Soon (already?), there will be Gen Z coming to the market. These guys’ first mobile is an iPhone 5. You could pretty much expect that any e-mails requiring scrolling down their screens, you would lose their interests.
The good news is, if you have properly spent the time to plan your key message as we discussed above, it should have already significantly reduced the length of your e-mails.
It doesn’t mean there is no more room for improvement. A habit I have is to always read my e-mail three times before I send it. The final proof-read is not just to pick up grammatical mistakes, but for me to seek opportunities to get rid of some words.
My rule of thumb is, if by removing the words and sentences does not change my overall message, then I would drop it. For important e-mails that go to senior stakeholders, I would also get someone else to proofread it, just to make sure that my logic is sound.
Improve readability
This sounds like common sense, but you will probably agree with me that in reality, it is often not so common. Two ways to improve readability I would encourage you to consider are:
Use readable words
While using acronyms is almost inevitable, it is worthwhile to think about who the audience is, before deciding what acronyms, and how much acronyms you would use.
On top of that, e-mails are not for you to show off how much English literature you have studied. It is for getting your message across. In the corporate environment we are in these days, most of the time, we will be working with people from multiple cultures, where English might not be their first language. Hence I would suggest wherever you can, use layman words as much as possible. This really helps people to focus on your key message instead of the words you used.
Break down your sentence into smaller and more digestible chunks
It is hard to read long sentences. You either run out of breaths (yeah when I read e-mails, I actually read it out to myself), or you forget what the second part of the sentence is related to. Use proper full stop and comma, make it clear to people on which part of the sentence they can take a break to reflect.
Wrapping this all up, let me re-write my imaginary boss, Peter’s e-mail for you here.
Hi Claire,
Can you please re-schedule our 1:1 to 10.30am on Thursday?
More convenient timing given I’m in HK this week.
Can you suggest Finance to re-schedule the group meeting with analytics to next week when James is back?
So we could cover both local and global views in the same meeting.
Can you schedule an appointment in 3–4 weeks’ time for us to go through your recommendation on the next steps for the commercialization work?
Specifically, please make sure you cover potential “conduct’”risk that might open up.
Many thanks.
Peter
You would probably find Peter sound a bit bossy here. This is probably an extreme example as I wanted to demonstrate the points discussed. In reality, would be nice to actually think about who you are writing the e-mail to, and give it a bit more personal touch.
I hope you find these tips helpful. Writing better e-mails is a continuous learning journey for me, hence would appreciate any thoughts and feedback.
Here’s why your colleagues don’t respond to your e-mails the way you wanted was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
from The Startup – Medium https://medium.com/swlh/heres-why-your-colleagues-don-t-respond-to-your-e-mails-the-way-you-wanted-277174753ab8?source=rss—-f5af2b715248—4