An email is received requesting "something" to be done ASAP. You have several "Top Priority" issues that you are trying to complete already for a top executive. The email has some urgent warning signs in it though...
Background:
Sender usually specifies a time frame/deadline. The "something" is not typically due for 3 more days. The sender is from Operations, you are Corporate in a different time zone, so reaching them is not exactly convenient.
What should be done?
Well, thankfully, it wasn't me in this scenario! The person who did receive this email did a brief follow-up, received no response, and put it on their "mid-priority" list. Which apparently was definitely NOT the correct course of action.
The Lesson:
When in doubt, you need to follow up to get all the facts and clarification on the level of urgency, and stay on it like your kid brother during summer break.
December 26, 2008
Today's Lesson: Email Urgency
May 5, 2008
Three Ways to Mitigate the Attention Crash, Yet Still Feel Informed
"One of the most important skills executives need today is the know-how to manage and harness their personal information flow.
The Attention Crash is a crisis in global business that is getting worse every day. By 2009, the Radicati Group predicts that we’ll spend 41% of our time managing email. Now add to that the IMs, documents, Facebook pokes, RSS feeds, Twitter tweets and text messages coming at us and we’re officially way oversubscribed.
Unfortunately, the problem will not abate. Human attention is finite. It doesn’t scale. Worse, the pace of change today is so rapid there’s a huge need to stay digitally savvy.
The key is in wrangling your information flow. Here are three of my best tips....Continue Reading
