How is your email and text etiquette? Do you have a clear standard in your organization for how quickly people can expect responses? And do you meet it?
I’m writing with a bit of heat this morning. This will be a short post.
On a few occasions recently, I’ve engaged with unresponsive people and businesses. It’s a little—what’s the word?—maddening, yes.
I’ll list three common excuses with responses:
I’m too busy.
Those are highly relative terms. It might be more likely that you’re disorganized, haven’t figured out a good system for communications, don’t delegate well, can’t at this point delegate well, or are just a little lazy or selfish. All of which can be improved in time. (And I said all those things with love, btw.)
I don’t have an answer for you yet.
Then tell me that. In my business, our rule for consultants is they must respond to clients within 24 hours, even if it’s a “I can’t get you that answer right now, but will do so by X. date.” For support staff, the rule is “within 4 business hours.” A simple and quick, “Got your email…can’t get to it now but will get you an answer by Thursday” is a courteous win. Make commitments and keep them.
I missed it.
It happens. But own it when it does. And don’t make it a habit!
I told a couple beloved clients recently that their responsiveness was awful. It burns up my assistant’s time and therefore my money, and often gets us into calendar squeezes as we strive to plan and schedule things amidst increasing pressure and tighter windows. No one wins. In both cases, it’s certainly not intentional, but rather a product of a disordered system of work—people trying to do too much and/or not adequately delegating—sometimes because they don’t yet have delegates, which I “get”. But again, these are solvable and you must solve them! Meanwhile, tell people that you know it and are working on it, and to be patient with you. Otherwise their patience will grow thin.
Lastly, what if you try to delegate more, be less lazy and more considerate, introduce a better system of tracking messages, etc. and still can’t keep up? It could be that a) you’re in the wrong job or role, or b) your organization is simply doing too much, and you need to scale back. Better to sustainably do less than crash and burn trying to do too much. Retaining clients and customers is much easier and less expensive than finding new ones!
I invite you to squarely face all this. It is hard but people in your life and work will thank you!