Effective Email: A key way to reduce organisational drag

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By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 10 mins

Summary: Much effort is placed on having the right strategy (going in the right direction), I feel as much effort should be put into executing the strategy well (moving quicking in the chosen direction, AKA removing friction / organisational drag). I’ve found that internal comms and email specifically is one of the core areas of organisational drag. 

  • "Your net productivity is the balance of the productive and unproductive forces in your life. A great deal of time and energy is spent thinking about how to increase effort, but there is a lot to be gained by reducing friction. A car will travel faster not only if you press the accelerator, but also if you remove the speed bumps." James Clear

  • Jingle: Effective email for efficient execution. 


Recommended listening

This blog is focused on internal email comms only (not email between businesses, or cold contacting someone, etc). 

  • How many hours a week do you do of internal email? 

  • I actually know this as I track every minute of my time at work. It’s normally 4-6 hours of my week and it’s stayed at this level for the last 5 years as I try to manage email comms internally at Edrolo to be as effective as possible. 

  • IMO you only want to be on the emails you need to be on (need to know basis) and you want these emails to be as effective as possible. 


Impact areas for effective email

  • Searchability: An email subject that is searchable.

  • Sending the email to the right people: Almost everything is on a need to know basis.

  • Actionability: @tagging at the top and in the body of the email for what you want from the people the email was sent to (see below for examples).

  • 0% misunderstanding: 100% understanding is not normally possible, it’s just a question of what amount of misunderstanding there will be. Minimising misunderstanding is key to reducing organisational drag. 

  • Structure: An email should not be a stream of consciousness, have tl;dr / One Sentence Summaries, indented structure with dot points (like this blog :) ). 

  • Length: “If I had longer I would have written a shorter speech.” - Churchill. 

  • Clarity: Can the email be read as fast as you can read?


The quality of someone's internal email I find to be one of the best ways to judge their overall quality. Bad at email = Normally bad at their job

  • "Every transaction is paid for at least three times. First, with the money you pay. Second, with the time you spend. Third, with the reputation you create through your behaviour. Being pleasant, reliable, and easy to work with might cost you a little more time. Perhaps even a bit of extra money. But the long-term returns from a great reputation usually outweigh the cost of a single transaction. Most of the value in life and in business arises out of good relationships."

  • Being good at email is one of the keys to being good at work.

  • Want a great reputation at work? IMO be great at internal email! Every email is marketing for you whether you like it or not. Don't have a bad personal brand marketing campaign!

  • Honestly, there are some people who when I see an email from them in my inbox I get anxious. 

  • 10 years ago Duncan saw email as ‘not output’ so not something to dedicate much proactive time to levelling up in. Today Duncan sees email as the most important communication tool at a company of ~30+ people, and that communication is the infrastructure upon which everything gets done. I don’t think it’s unfair to say: A company with good communications = A good company!

  • Get rich or die trying => To get rich, get good at effective email, or die in bureaucratic internal email! 


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Details


Searchability: An email subject that is searchable.

  • Goal: To be able to find every single email you ever want with one search

    • You know how you put in keywords to get good at searching Google, how you have learned to work with Google to have it return what you want? 

    • Well IMO you want to do the exact same thing with your email subjects. The email subjects should carefully have all the keywords needed so you can find the email again. This normally means way more keywords than people expect and putting the keywords in order from most to least important. 

    • To rank well on Google a website needs to be ‘SEO friendly’ (search engine optimisation friendly). IMO make all your email subjects at the entire company search friendly! 

    • Also, this doesn’t just make searching easier it allows people to know what is in an email properly! 

Sending the email to the right people: Almost everything is on a need to know basis.

  • Don’t send emails to people you don’t need to send emails to (just like don’t invite people to meetings who don’t need to be there). 

  • I used to think I wanted to know everything that was going on at Edrolo, now I want to know as little as possible. 

    • Almost everything is on a need to know basis. 

    • If everyone needs to know everything then what you can get done is only what one person can know. 

  • What can happen with each person you add to an organisation: 

    • Bad: Each new person added adds less than 1 person’s output

    • Average: Each new person added adds 1 person’s output

    • Good: Each new person added adds more than 1 person’s output

  • A core strategy to have people add more than 1 person’s output is only having people know what they need to know (no more, no less). One part of this is not bogging them down with unnecessary emails or meetings. It’s not you being nice adding someone to an email or meeting, it’s you adding organisational drag! 

  • It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. 

    • Being on unnecessary emails is killer! 

    • Not being on necessary emails is a killer!

    • Leave a meeting if you're not contributing: “Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren't adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.” - Elon

    • If you are not needing to be on an email please ask not to be included! 


Actionability: @tagging at the top and in the body of the email for what you want from the people the email was sent to (see below for examples).

  • Ideally you want the actions that someone needs to do in an email to be as clear as possible, to be literally black and white. @tagging is a great strategy for this. 

  • Every email sent internally at Edrolo IMO should have @tagging at the top. 

  • Details of @tagging

    • Levels

  • @tagging = 1. Who * 2. What action

  • “2. What action” I’ve found there are 3 main types of action in an email:

    • 1. #read

    • 2. #respond: to the email and you show where you want someone to respond

    • 3. #action: please complete that action noted in the email

  • Example: 

    • Example: -L10

      • Hi team, 

      • I think this thing is interesting. 

      • I think we should do this. 

    • Example:  L1

      • Hi team, 

      • I think this thing is interesting. 

      • I think we should do look into X. 

      • @warren: can you please look into X and respond to the email when you are done with the findings. 

    • Example:  L2

      • @all #read: 

      • @warren #action:

      • Hi team, 

      • I think this thing is interesting. 

      • I think we should do this X. 

      • @warren: can you please look into X and respond to the email when you are done with the findings. 

    • Example:  L3

      • @all #read: 

      • @warren #action:

      • Hi team, 

      • I think this thing is interesting. 

      • I think we should do this X. By look into X I recommend we use the product and speak to 3x users of the product. 

      • @warren: can you please do this action and respond to the email when you are done with the findings. If you have a different view on what we should do please respond to the email outlining your alternative. 

    • Comment

      • The amount of confusion @tagging removes is frankly astounding. I wish this was standard for all email comms so you could email across organisations this way! 



0% misunderstanding: 100% understanding is not normally possible, it’s just a question of what amount of misunderstanding there is. Minimising misunderstanding is key to reducing organisational drag. 

  • Almost all emails contain some information dispensement component. Minimising misunderstanding is absolutely key for reducing organisational drag. 

  • My rules of thumb

    • An email to 1-10 people - reread the email yourself to try to level it up. 

    • An email to 11-100 people - prior to sending to the full set of people, get feedback from 1-2 people (eg what does the email say, what is the action item, etc). 

      • I’m yet to do this and not get feedback that is obvious as soon as someone says it about how to level up the email. 

      • We all have ego distortions and blind spots, a core strategy to finding them is asking others to point them out!

    • An email to 11-100 people - prior to sending to the full set of people, get feedback from 2-4 people


Structure: An email should not be a stream of consciousness, have tl;dr / One Sentence Summaries, indented knowledge with dot points (like this blog :) ). 

  • Get good at as many different literary devices as you can. A random grab bag: 

  • At work (which this blog is written for) I’m going at maximum precision and maximum density of information, not at eg the most relaxing thing to read. The emails are designed to be dense as I feel that is optimal for internal email communications. 

  • As an example I think this table says things that would be hard to do at all in words. So get good at using many different literary devices.

Length: “If I had longer I would have written a shorter speech.” - Churchill. 

  • Levels

  • This is really tough, but get it done! 


Clarity: Email can be read as fast as you can read

  • No acronyms or nonsense words: 

    • “Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes at Tesla. In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don’t want people to have to memorise a glossary just to function at Tesla.” - Elon

  • Correct use of qualification words (don’t be absolute when you shouldn’t). 

  • This is another area that never stops. My goal = That you want recipients to be able to read the email as fast as they can read and understand exactly what you intend. 


If you only take away one thing

  • Life doesn’t get easier, you get better at it. IMO there is no ceiling to how good one can get at email. If you work in an organisation of more than 1 person, communication is going to be very important. Why would you not want to become a master at communicating?

  • Over time you hopefully pick up on more and more areas that were ‘unconscious incompetence’ and move them to ‘second nature / unconscious competence’. 

  • I used to spend lots of time trying to get better at ‘output’, I didn’t realise that perhaps the most universal and important from of ‘output’ is email. I now try to proactively get better at email, and suggest you do too!