Rapid Responses: An email lifestyle
So as I travel I find that I am able to do some items more than I can do than others. Case in point is blogging vs. reading blogs.
I can read more blogs than I post during the week. I’m sure my 19 readers have have noticed I post mainly on weekends. Regardless I ALWAYS have time for rapid response email, personal and business. Email is the most used communication today, at least in my life, so we all need to find a way to make it productive.
Email is everything for me – shopping lists, family/friend catch up and the latest corporate fire drill and I suspect this is the case for most everyone. Outlook actually runs my life. If it’s not on my calendar or in my inbox it doesn’t exist and I won’t be there. Because of this I don’t understand slow responders – personal or work, at home or on the road. I also don’t understand how people get annoyed when I don’t show up and they didn’t send me a outlook invite for their wedding.
My dad and kids will take up to 3 days to respond sometimes which is a little rough. I even have one friend who takes like 10 days. Admittedly, Rich uses his same email address from high school, pgapro90@hotmail.com, and checks his email at a library, but c’mon 10 days. Email doesn’t response don’t need to be as immediate as texting, which kid’s these day do while packing your #6 meal at the drive-thru while you wait for them to type 37 characters, but email has a fairly quick turn expectation.
Save Rich, for most part non-work stuff is next calendar day. I can understand a “not-plugged” in approach with family and friends, but work is a “not so much” reality. So if you are traveling, in the wrong time zone or a foreign country you still should practice a rapid response regime on email. If someone sent you something on the “to” line, you basically have to respond quickly, quick is relative, but same day.
Back to my reading v. blogging use case/intro…. While on the road reading blogs and answering emails, I was able to random into Product Management 2.0, a product management blog for the 280 group. I found a post on how to increase productivity via email. This is apparently “tip #2” in a series on how to be a good productive PM.
With the first recommendation of only check email 3 times a day, I was encouraged to keep reading for no other reason than I like good fiction with a happy ending. The list of productivity tips includes other goofy ones, like delete stuff and ignore “long threads”. Credibility is rapidly declining as I read and I’m waiting for the punchline… so I keep reading…
I know how interesting it is to remember a better time of yellow legal pads and no blackberries, but 3 times a day is slightly unbelievable recommendation and not very service oriented. Email, like it or not, is your most important resource on understanding the business. Often PM’s have distributed teams which make other communication channels difficult to manage and be effective in for the organization across geographies and time zones. A product manager’s world is flat!
So my recommendations on how to manage email as a Product Manager are slightly different:
- Install google desktop for rapid research and follow up
- Have your Blackberry in hand and outlook online (awareness vs. action)
- Don’t type more than 3 sentences on your blackberry and only respond to sender when on your BB.
- Acknowledge and/or address every email on the same day, providing it was received during your business day.
- Pick up the phone if it’s<10 mins or stroll to person’s office/cube if at the same location
- Understand the issue before you respond (again phone or walk around)
- Leverage a “weekend hour” – catch up on long threads, respond to open items and communicate on the next week.
DISCLAIMER: I’m a technology PM type, not CPG or a long cycle low support product category.
WARNING: I’m your quintessential crackberry enthusiast. I get phantom rings. I check my blackberry all the time to see if I got a message. I sometimes even check my BB to make sure it’s working - just in case.
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Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, email, texting, Product Management 2.0, how to increase, world is flat, google desktop, crackberry, phantom rings
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