Angela Crocker

Write. Teach. Organize.

Banish Reply All

by // 1 Comment

Reply all button

Digital Cleanse Day 15:

Banish Reply All

“Reply All” drives me batty. In general, I think email is a great communications tool. Easy to create. Quick to send. Simple to reply. But “reply all” makes me hate my inbox. I’m sure you can relate.

For example

Let’s say you have three projects on the go each with with 6 team members. If just one project manager sends an email to their team asking each person for input and every team member sends their response as “reply all” then you have 5 new messages. If everyone responds just once to all five of those messages you have 25 more messages. Suddenly you’ve got 30 new messages to read. But wait, you’ve got three projects on the go so you now have 90 messages. Multiple reply threads means the information is now fragmented. Worse is when someone hijacks the thread to ask one person a question about something unrelated adding still more email. And may the Gods help you catch up, if you happen to be offline when a “reply all” conversation hits your inbox.

Consequences

This fire hose of messages can overflow your inbox. Even worse, it can bury genuine messages. You waste time wading through multiple copies of the same messages looking for the one tidbit of new information. Sometimes you just archive the whole thread unread. It’s just too hard to find the new info. Sadly that means key pieces of information can be lost. Not good for you, the project or the team.

Why do people still reply all?

So why do people abuse the reply all button?  Everyone wants to be perceived as a contributing member of the team. They share their two cents worth to demonstrate that contribution. In some cases, team members are focused on only one or two small projects. They don’t get a lot of email so they don’t see the same volume that reply all creates for people involved in many projects.  I’ve also seen people wanting to mitigate their own risk. If they didn’t acknowledge the email it didn’t happen.

A related problem may be the overuse of carbon copy (CC). Yes, you want to be inclusive. But many its possible to be over inclusive. What do you think?

What can we do about it?

Education is the first step. If everyone needs your information then use reply all with my blessing. But remember that everyone needs to know the location of the meeting, only the organizer needs to know your request for a gluten-free bun.

A better solution is to move your team into a different communication tool. Maybe a Facebook or LinkedIn group would work for your team?  Or an internal instant messaging service? Or a project collaboration tool like Basecamp or Slack? Please explore the options and banish reply all.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Figure out Your 3P. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)

 

Figure Out Your 3P

by // Leave a Comment

Digital Cleanse Day 14:

Figure Out Your 3P

Your 3P is my solution to one of the most common social media objections.  People worry about sharing too much online and the resulting loss of privacy. I understand the concern.

If you’re using social media in your private life, nothing obligates you to share on a social network.  What stays offline, stays private.  It’s your choice to share with  family and friends or to interact with others who share your hobby.  What you share is your choice. However, if you are using social networks for business purposes, you’re going to have to share something. I recommend you divide yourself into three parts, your 3P.  These parts are professional, personal and private.

Professional

Your professional part is fully public. You share expertise, experience, anecdotes, details about your job and information about any products or services you work with. Sharing about your professional life can help your brand with sales and marketing. It can also position you for your next job or entrepreneurial venture. What you share publicly helps establish credibility, cultivate a network and demonstrate authority.

Personal

To be successful online in business, you also need to share another part of yourself that I call the personal part, the next third of your 3P. Your personal part might include a love of hockey, a passion for rescue dogs and commitment to tennis.  This is the part that humanizes you. It makes you a complete person not just a selling machine. It allows you to establish rapport and garner trust.

You share to find mutual interests as a lead into in-depth conversations. Your willingness to share more than just sales messages and marketing banter make you a whole person. This is really important. Who you are and how you related to people has to be more than shop talk. You can’t be all about business all the time.

Through your online posts, comments and interactions you must blend your professional part with your personal part. Remember this is SOCIAL networking, even if it’s conducted digitally, you are still interacting with real people. The personal things you share can make it more enjoyable to do business together.

Private

The private part of yourself stays offline. You decide to keep details of your hemorrhoids, money troubles and off-color humor private. Politics and religion are often kept private, too, just like at a dinner party with the extended family. If you’re not sure what to keep private, ask yourself two questions:

  • What do you want to hide from your Mom?
  • What would embarrass you if it appeared on the front page of a newspaper?

The answers to those two questions make up your private life. If you want to keep it private, keep it offline. You choose. If you don’t share it, it’s not online. You are in control. (Well, almost in control. Remember that others can quote your contentious comments and share photos or videos of other embarrassing moments.)

Divide and Blend

How to express the divide and the blend between the professional, personal and private parts of your life, is entirely up to you. Every person’s answer will be unique. As an example, here’s a snapshot of my 3P breakdown:

  • Professional: communicator, writer, instructional designer, teacher, speaker
  • Personal: parent, home owner, Star Wars fan, doodles with fine art supplies
  • Private: asthmatic, struggled with postpartum depression
    [Although, I have now made these private parts into personal parts in the interests of illustrating the 3P.]

Angela Crocker - 3P - professional, personal, private

Share only what you’re comfortable sharing. Don’t create an artificial self online. I’d rather you shared a minimal amount and were true to yourself. Faking it will not get you anywhere online or in life. Authenticity is the nobler path.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Schedule Digital Tasks and Digital Fun. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)

Schedule Digital Tasks and Digital Fun

by // 1 Comment

Digital Cleanse Day 13:

Schedule Digital Tasks and Digital Fun

Take time to schedule your digital activities. You get to decide when to use technology. In turn, this affirms when you’re NOT going to use technology. You don’t have to use it all the time. Frankly, a 24/7 digital life would be terrible for your physical and mental well-being and it can disrupt your sleep. You are in charge of your digital life. You also get to choose when you’re going to be offline, away from your computer, ignoring your smartphone.

I recommend you separate your digital tasks separately from digital fun. Digital tasks are things you do for work or your own projects. These might include writing blog posts, checking social media feeds, creating illustrations or editing copy.  Digital fun includes all your leisure activities. Movie night, browsing Instagram, video games, Instagram and other social media outlets are all fun digital activities. Of course, for a movie reviewer watching movies is work not play. That’s OK. You decide how to define the activities in your digital life.

Put your digital time in your calendar. Here’s an example from my own calendar. Events in blue are digital tasks related to my professional life. Orange events are digital snippets from my personal calendar.

A digital calendar excerpt showing digital tasks separately from digital fun.

You’ll notice my digital fun happens in early mornings, evenings and weekends. From Monday to Friday, I schedule my work related digital tasks, for the most part. What you can’t see in this example is that I have flexibility to move my digital appointments around other events. For example, if I’m a parent volunteer parent for a school field trip on Monday morning, I’ll reschedule my blog writing time for the afternoon.

There’s power in writing something down. It helps you set boundaries for how long and when you are going to do a particular activity. It also helps you prioritize that activity so it gets done. If you schedule a conflict, you decide if you can cancel the digital activity or reschedule it. Formalizing your digital appointments can also help you stick to it, especially if one or more digital tasks is a swallow the frog moment for you.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Give Up On Toxic People. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)