Recently I wrote a blog about how to deal more effectively with emails in your inbox – but, how do we reduce the number of emails that arrive there in the first place? In my experience, the more efficient you become at answering emails, the more emails you get. Secondly, the more your own behaviour supports the idea that email can be used for semi-real time communications, the more you will find that urgent things get sent to you, with total disregard for your personal diary or other priorities. While sitting at your desk and monitoring emails every hour it is easy to respond in semi real time, but as the sending party has no idea of whether you are at your desk or on a beach, by doing so you create an unwanted behaviour pattern in the sender. In order to signal when we are happy to treat email as real time and when we can’t, we often put up an email out-of-message reading something along the lines of “I am now away until x and will deal with your email on my return." As pointed out in a recent blog, I read, this means when you return you are greeted by hundreds of emails which can pretty much spoil any time away. In fact, I know of people who don’t want to go away on holiday as it means they have too many emails to deal with on their return.

The blog points to a pretty extreme solution practised by Joana Breidenbach of charity fundraisers Better place  If you send her an email during her vacation time, you get the following reply: "Many thanks for your mail. Unfortunately I won't be able to read it, as I am taking my annual email sabbatical. From (date x to y) all my emails will be automatically deleted." She explained that she started this email unplugged system as she receives 100 emails a day and so it was "overwhelming" to be on holiday knowing they would be there when she got back. She's told her colleagues that they can send her a text message in a real emergency and she still reads websites and Twitter - but the email torrent is blocked. In the blog they also cited the example of Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Berkman Center at Harvard University and an adviser to Microsoft. She also takes an email sabbatical. "Have you ever returned from vacation more stressed out than when you left? Is the reason because you came home to 10,000 email messages?" she asked in a recent post. She also handled the obvious question about missing out on wanted emails - but argues she worries less about that, than the consequence of not having a proper break. "When I'm burnt out, I'm... a terrible person to be around," Danah says.

When did things get so distorted that the primary responsibility (and hence urgency) of the issue automatically belongs to you, the receiving party. Surely the responsibility for the issue should remain with the initiating party, until such time as the issue is discussed and it is agreed who now owns the outcome. Putting the onus back on the person who sent the email can be achieved by not treating email as a real time communication method. When you are away for any period of time, your automated reply message can be worded to indicate to the other person that you are not in a position to receive any urgent requests and asking them to contact you via another means, such as text or voicemail. This technique alone can usually eliminate the majority of issues fobbed off on you, rather than genuinely escalated. Telling people you have no access to read the emails, even if you do, also helps keep the onus on the sender to own the issue until they can genuinely hand it over to you. Email is fantastic for non-real time transfer of information or data but it is hopeless for real time two-way communications. Rather than complaining about being a victim of the system, applying these simple techniques will put you back in control and it means your inbox becomes your friend again instead of your enemy.

In the work place we often chide ourselves, and others, if it appears decisions are being made, based on subjective feelings and emotions, rather than objective facts and analysis. We try to build objective models to evaluate decisions,  such as Key Performance Indices, employee rating systems, pro’s and con’s lists with weighting factors and so on, but when these models do not produce the result we expect or want, we often change the model. Why is this? What is it that gives us a gut instinct on the right decision? 

Our brains are much more complex and developed than animals. The fact that our heads have evolved to become so big,  to accommodate our large brain, is one of the key reasons that child birth in humans is so difficult and painful. However, even in reptiles that have very small brains, there are commonalities in brain structure, that control the most basic decision making, that drives a fight or flight response to danger. Analysis of our brains, indicates that the signals that arrive in our limbic centre, the source of our emotions, arrive much faster than the slower but more accurate prefrontal cortex part of our brain that is responsible for thinking and analysis. When faced with a decision we have the instant, albeit fuzzy knowledge that this decision will be rewarding or threatening to us. After that, our thinking brain is usually just trying to justify the decision that we have already made in our gut. 

This was beautifully illustrated recently as I watched with amusement as a friend of mine, who has just turned 40,  was trying  to justify why buying a Porsche is a really sensible idea. He argued that his current car is costing money on maintenance and how a second hand Porsche is actually cheaper than many family sized 4x4's. Being a family man he wants to be convinced that this is a really logical and sensible decision and any good sales person would jump on that and close the deal. The emotional battle was won at the start, now he needs some logical "sensible" arguments needed to put his cognitive dissonance to rest, and actually buy the car. 

In the workplace, it is helpful to recognise that decisions are indeed emotionally driven and take that into account for your own decision making, as well as using it to your advantage when trying to get other people to make decisions.

One of the things we pride ourselves on, when we get promoted into management is our ability to multitask. Women also tease men about being less adept than they are, at juggling multiple priorities. I watched with amusement as a friend of mine was making a round of tea for the guests, and every time he spoke, he stopped preparing the tea, until his wife with frustration marched across and took over the duties, before we all died of thirst.

It turns out, our rational brains are just not capable of multi-tasking - they are what is termed a serial processor. In other words, they physiologically can only do one conscious thing at a time.  Unconsciously they are capable of amazing feats, all at the same time, but the intelligent, thinking tasks have to line up in single file for processing in our PreFrontal Cortex (PFC).   When we think we are multi-tasking, we are in fact switching quickly between tasks. The more complex the task, the more information needs to be set up in our short term memory, to quickly access for rational processing. As soon as we are distracted by a different task, a different set of neurons has to be fired up to load up that thought pattern. We often quite accurately describe what is happening with phrases like: “now where was I?”, or “I have lost my train of thought”, yet for some reason we still persevere in trying to do multiple complex tasks at once. Even the simplest activity like rubbing our stomach while patting our head, we find difficult. Productivity in the modern workplace, where our jobs are to think, not to produce tangible things, has become woeful, yet often because we measure activity rather than results, we are not aware how poorly we are performing. Brain scans have shown that our IQ drops significantly with multi-tasking. Despite the fact that we enjoy the emotional satisfaction of being busy, as a recent study by Zhen Wang showed, in reality a study by Clifford Nass, at Standford university proved that even our switching ability gets worse, the more we do it. Unfortunately, as team leaders and managers we cannot just closet ourselves away, focusing on a series of single tasks until they are done. Despite the fact that it is the most effective way of completing the task, other people need access to our time, to complete their work. I have found the best way is to create some blocks of time in your day where you disappear into a meeting room or coffee shop and work on your top priorities in an uninterrupted and focused manner and at least ensure that for the most important things we do, we are doing it with our brains peaked to the maximum! The rest of the time, we have to bumble along with a damaged IQ, as we try to answer the phone while tapping away at the computer and pointing, using our nose, at the red file on the shelf that contains the project schedule he so urgently needs.

I read a blog this week by  Phil Hesketh. In it, he refers to a recent study by Michael Norton of Harvard Business School that shows the unpopular adage of “familiarity breeds contempt”, may be true. His work concluded that while in the early stages of meeting someone you look for similarities and therefore the more you interact the more you like them, when that gets taken further, you discover the dissimilarities and start to like them less. Hesketh concludes - it all comes down to balance. If you hang around with people for long enough, you’ll eventually generate some mutual respect and discover common interests, even if they're not your type.


My take on this is that in the workplace environment a popular team building approach is to go out and build rafts together, or walk on hot coals so you really get to know and work with your colleagues. I have always been somewhat sceptical of this approach based on a “Team Olympics” team building exercise I did years ago to build team rapport between two departments in the company I was working for. The IT team were full of the stereotypical brilliant but “nerdy” types and the engineering team included some people who actually played sport at a national level. Whoever set the team building exercise up, obviously thought if we all go to know each other better, morale would improve. It backfired horribly, as whereas previously there was at least mutual respect at a work level for each other’s expertise and contributions, on the sports field the competitive bully behaviour came out in the “jocks” and the “nerds” were ridiculed for having poor hand-eye co-ordination, something which in absolutely no way affected their work performance. Highlighting these differences in fact worsened team spirit back in the workplace. In contrast to this, I have worked on big projects,  where the adversity faced by real workplace difficulties, in an environment where the end goal was clearly defined in terms of importance and urgency, actually pulled the team together very well, despite many differences in personality or out of work interests and abilities. I am not suggesting all team building exercises are bad, but I do think there is sometimes an over emphasis on getting to know each other well outside of work, as a technique for improving team work, rather than building the team spirit in the workplace through clear, common goals and outcomes with a high tolerance for diversity of styles in how the job is done. 

Getting organised
One of my challenges when I was in a global management role, working out of London, was that I would be on email at 5am addressing issues in China, and still have urgent emails pouring in at 10pm, when the US were now on line. Trying to get on top of email seemed to be a never ending losing battle, until I applied a simple methodology: Triage, Decide, Do (TDD). Step 1 is to triage. I scan through everything that is there so I know what is important. Everything in isolation is important, you can only really know what  the top priority is, once you know what all the other priorities are. During this step, I delete all junk mail or trivial time wasters and file all (for info only-no action required) read items.  The second step is to Decide: I can now prioritise my inbox, having read everything that is in there.  So I decide IF and WHEN I am going to do it. I don’t put it on a ToDo list, I schedule it in my diary.  The decision tree for sorting my inbox goes like this:  For the really urgent, but quick items, I just do it then and there. For the really important, but not urgent items I create a “meeting” timeslot in my diary, attach it to the Outlook diary entry and remove from my inbox.  For the urgent items that demands a little more time, I mark them unread and delete the rest, so that all that is left in my – now uncluttered - inbox are urgent things that need to be done today. The final step is Do.  Apply the Yoda strategy.  “There is no such thing as try, there is do, or do not do.” In the time slot allocated for the task, I complete the task, rather than flitting between multiple activities, because I have already established this is THE most important thing to do next.

Jeff Weiner, who is Head of LinkedIn, has over 4000 employees globally, yet keeps on top of email with these 7 guidelines:
1. If you want to receive less email, send less email
2. Mark as unread – it allows him to quickly glance through his inbox to respond to time pressing matters
3. Establish a routine – Set a schedule for how and when you deal with your inbox
4. Be precise with your words – Words matter, so chose them carefully to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation.
5. Give some thought To: the recipients – Use To and Cc appropriately
6. Acknowledge receipt – If you are in the To line

7. Take the combustible stuff offline – Pick up the phone or deal face to face to reintroduce important sub-text that is lost in email

Recently I attended the annual LinkedIn conference, in order to get some ideas and support for hiring and keeping the best people in the business. The industry speakers really pushed the concept of developing your staff internally, and paying as much attention to recruitment activities for internal placements, as hiring externally.

We had some really inspirational speakers including the founder of Earth Hour (Todd Sampson) and Kurt Fearnley (paraOlympic champion wheelchair marathoner).

Todd challenged us to embrace Creativity  - he defined it as the last remaining true competitive advantage a company has. Think differently about how you can work to change the world. The Earth Hour idea started in a coffee shop in down town Sydney by a few ordinary people who wanted to make a difference. Today its a global phenomenon where dozens
of cities around the world switch their lights off for an hour, to raise awareness of climate change. Kurt Fearnley could be sitting in his wheel chair feeling sorry for himself because of all the things he cant do -
instead he has a decade of success behind him as undefeated world champion. He literally crawled the 96km Kokoda track - walking it, is regarded as one of the toughest challenges to do. 

My key takeaway was great companies are built with great people. Great people are just ordinary people who are "on a mission" and are motivated to achieve something worthwhile. Great people work best in an environment where
they have an exciting goal, are given the environment and means to apply and grow their talents and have the discipline and resilience to not give up when times get tough.