The failure to observe rules of communications costs time and money

Most managers have at some time taken a management ­training course which included, among other topics, making them ­familiar with the basic rules of communication. They learned at that time that every communication has four components: the fact related content, the relationship information (How do I treat my counterpart as the recipient?), an appeal regarding the desired effect of the communication, and finally, the revelation about oneself: How do I present myself, what does this message say about me?

Although stating the obvious, let it be pointed out once again: communication in a business context serves the purpose of the business. It must be goal-oriented, should improve performance – or at least should not worsen it – and it should solve problems without creating new (communication) problems.

Expressed in figures, the problems can be described in the ­following way. Say 10,000 employees work with e-mail in a company. Every single one of them loses five minutes of productive working time every day because of the trials and tribulations of e-mail communication. Do the math yourself: at a cost rate of €100 per employee and 200 working days, this adds up to the grand sum of about €16 million. Impressive! The bottom line clearly shows that a company benefits from instituting a process of continuous improvement in this sector.

So what goes wrong so often?

The sin of the subject line is a lack of clarity for the recipient

The sender has not really thought about what should be in the subject line. Either the important Swiss offer must be ­mentioned in addition in the subject line, or a separate e-mail with this offer in the attachment must be sent. Once upon a time, the secretary would have demanded this information from her boss. The subject line is the header of an e-mail – if it is weak, the recipient is lost at sea in many ways. When the e-mail comes in, he does not know what it is about, whether it is important, whether he can leave the matter until the next day. If he does not supplement the subject line himself, the chances are slim that he will later be able to identify the e-mail quickly. In addition, the recipient will be annoyed to a greater or lesser degree about the sloppiness of the sender, forcing him to do extra work here.

Another irritating habit is the use of e-mails previously received from someone as a template for a new message to the sender without changing the subject line. The sender has the advantage that it is not necessary for him to look up the address. The recipient then has the joy, as a minimum, of trying to figure out what the old subject line has to do with the new content – assuming he even opens the e-mail, because if the old subject line refers to a matter which has long since been put to rest, he may well ignore it for the moment if he is under time pressure and then later simply delete it as outdated. At least the mutual respect would balance out in this case: “I don’t read your e-mails if you cannot be bothered to write an appropriate subject line for them.”