The e-mail from your boss who happens to be abroad at the moment reads: “Yes, sure.” You know, of course, that he wrote it on his BlackBerry. What bad luck that the e-mail it refers to is missing. You rack your brain trying to figure out what decision-making memo you sent to him by e-mail. You look through all of your e-mails. That takes quite a while. At some point, you stumble across an e-mail from a colleague who put your address in the CC line when he asked the boss if he could, as an ­exceptional case, go on vacation at the time of the monthly closing.

Another commonly accepted custom here, by the way, is ignoring capitalization – because the shift to the capitals is troublesome. Users of this technology are largely in agreement with this method. Nevertheless, you should take a moment to think about who you are writing to. To a colleague who knows that you are at the airport in Japan and answering quickly just before you check in? Or to the CEO of the newly acquired customer? After all, every e-mail reply is a business card for your company and for you yourself as the sender – that is the way it should be considered, anyway.

And when it comes to text messages (SMS): great for brief information (the first S stands for short!) such as “Train ­delayed by 2 hours” or “Call me urgently about offer from Switzerland”, but is not suitable for more complex matters in the business ­environment. And please, do not use the abbreviations ­propagated by young people in a business context! What you do when communicating with friends or your children is a different matter altogether.

Looking for role models

Many companies have a book of e-mail etiquette. “Have” in this context means: it is available on the Intranet. But very few of the employees have ever looked at it, and very few of those follow its guidelines.

So it is of no value because no one pays any attention to it. And no one pays any attention to it because the managers themselves set a bad example and so, of course, failure to comply with the guidelines does not lead to sanctions. When people at the tip of the hierarchy set an example themselves, the effect is far more powerful than that of beautifully formulated rules. Think about it – how did e-mail correspondence manage to become the common medium for company communication? When the top man began using this medium – and only this medium – to send out the announcements of his meetings. So it is time for a role model!