Email is a Team Sport Vancouver Digital Project Managers • October 2016

Boris Mann
 @bmann
 #emailteam COO-for-Hire, Product Consulting & Business Design

–Bill French, 1999 “Email is where knowledge goes to die”

What’s wrong with email? Knowledge trapped in individual inboxes Discussions can’t be passively discovered / shared Doesn’t build knowledge You’re not “working out loud”

Ye Olde Emaile Skillz Many email “best practices” have already been lost to us Top posting an answer, explanation, or other details when it’s a response to something that comes after Trimming a long email to just the relevant bits, or trimming a long chain of previous replies Editing the subject when … there is a new subject being discussed

–@LizzieSkurnick “ A word for the email you put off responding to because you want to give it your full attention—and never answer”

Inbox Zero? If you’re going to use email as a to-do list, then do it properly Every email in your inbox is a to-do File it, schedule it, or respond to it Newer email apps understand this (e.g. Mailbox schedule / snooze innovation)

Zero Internal Emails Why do you send email to someone else in your company? What collaboration tools do you use? How are you building knowledge internally?

Email Onboarding Do you teach new employees email at your company?

Are you in an email first culture? Have a question? Send an email! Want to let everybody in the office/ company/world know about something? Send an email! Bonus points: CC extra people!

Are you in an ask on Slack first culture? Unless Slack is managed, people get lazy and just ask the same question all the time, too Naming conventions, automation, teaching people how to mute / manage notifications Bots might have some play here

Treat Email as Border Messaging Your company is a hill fort, and you stockpile knowledge and short messages internally. Externally, you work together to catapult out messages, and to catch the incoming flood of emails.

Company Email is Owned by the Company Take advantage of this to turn it into a team sport We do this for projects, why not for email?

Whose job is it to write it down? How do you get volunteer scribes? How do you elevate note taking? How do you build knowledge in your company?

Tools HelpScout https://www.helpscout.net Intercom http://intercom.com Front App http://frontapp.com

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–Front App “Great external communication relies on flawless internal collaboration.”

Do we need more inboxes? Project Management CRM Feed Readers Chat

Zombie email: 1) the thread that keeps getting reply-all-ed 2) the long running discussion which gets re-forwarded when someone is looking for the same thing again

Team Sport Drafting, copy editing Scaling individuals Best person for the job Working out loud Links for everything

Thanks! @bmann #emailteam

Photo Credits Banksy Email Stencil, Bruno Girin https:// www.flickr.com/photos/brunogirin/2484786902 Boris in a Quip shirt, Rachael Ashe http:// rachaelashe.com Hill fort, Josh Bushinsky https://www.flickr.com/ photos/38276395@N00/88987780/ Cat inbox, Citizen Helder https://www.flickr.com/ photos/citizenhelder/4679777914