Email

I don’t know exactly how to give advice about this… But I need to share some information with all my students looking to be email experts. Everyone suffers with the email spam issues so just deal with it.

My personal take on email is not too far away from the ideas of Elon Musk. He says “Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company.” You should reach out to the person you need that can get the work done. That person probably has the most at stake for getting things done. With that in mind, remember a couple important “tone” issues. First, don’t read into email “tone”. I personally like shorter and direct emails that I can take action on. Check out this email writing aid for Gmail called boomerang. Maybe use it if it helps you figure out some pointers for getting email responses.

Also I received this cool wall hanging chart from The Advisory Board Company about being an email ninja! It’s also got some good pointers. One last idea, take some lessons from the news and treat your emails at legal documents. So, be to defend anything you write in an email because the idea that the email will disappear is foolish. It’s probably out there to haunt you forever… So use your head.