Lean Mail Management

1 day

course code 1. 11

What is the course for

#1

Recognise the consequences and dangers inherent in the misuse of mail and messaging systems

#2

Improve a message's effectiveness and avoid misunderstandings

#3

Defining individual and corporate countermeasures for limiting damage and regaining productivity

The birth of e-mail initially encouraged and accelerated communication both inside and outside of business in an exciting way. Email was originally a formidable tool. However, its use has become distorted, making it unsustainable at a professional level. On average a worker spends between five and twenty hours a week responding to e-mails. Out of two hundred emails received every day, on average only between 10 and 20% are actually of any importance. Present numbers associated with mail circulation have assumed a ridiculous size and hefty consequences for people and businesses: around 200 billion emails were sent worldwide each day in 2016. Compare that to 2009, when “only” 150 billion emails were sent in the entire year.

Studies have shown that on average we spend an average of between eight and ten hours a week dealing with emails outside working hours. Being unable to “switch off” leaves deep scars in terms of stress and emotional exhaustion. Other studies have found that employees and managers spend around 36% of the day contacting customers and colleagues, searching for information and scheduling meetings, mostly by email. This is having an adverse effect on productivity and performance which can no longer be neglected by entrepreneurs and managers. In several business projects, it was found that by reducing the counter-productive nature of mail management by 25%, each employee could earn the equivalent of six weeks salary, every year. This has a profound impact on people and business.

This training course aims to raise awareness of the consequences arising from the misuse of email for people and businesses, and to propose possible countermeasures to limit these adverse effects and regain productivity.

Goals

  • Recognise the consequences and dangers inherent to the misuse of mail and messaging systems
  • Improve the effectiveness of a message and avoid misunderstandings
  • Be read and understood in the increasingly invasive and redundant context of e-mail
  • Define individual and corporate countermeasures for limiting damage and regaining productivity

Addressed to

  • Entrepreneurs and professionals
  • CEO, General Managers
  • Division Heads
  • Executives and management

Contents

Understanding the impacts of the misuse of email

  • Email and instant messaging: features, potentials and hidden dangers
  • Short-term effects on productivity: some facts and figures to help us reflect better 
  • Effects on long-term cognitive abilities: “The Whitehall II UK Study”
  • Multitasking and mail management: quantitative effects on other management activities
  • Mail management and emotional aspects
  • Mail management and stress
  • Pressure, sense of urgency and importance: understanding the cerebral mechanisms that are often hidden within a simple email
  • Relational aspects linked to mail management: impacts on the quality of communication
  • The effect of excessive unimportant information delivered by mail
  • Productivity, concentration and email: an incompatible trinity

Lean email and messaging management

  • The REPE method (Reading-Elaboration-Planning-Execution) applied to mail management
  • The sprint/relax principle
  • The batching principle: reduce the frequency of email management
  • How and when to read incoming mail.
  • Whether to answer an email
  • When to write and when not to write an email
  • Farewell to multiple recipients
  • Who to email and why: the role of the recipient
  • The ethics of cc and bcc
  • The hidden pitfalls in forwarding an email
  • Farewell to the myth of the empty inbox
  • Archiving emails
  • How to avoid being overwhelmed by unimportant emails 
  • Technology to save you time in managing your mailbox: priority, cluster, spamming, secondary mail, etc …
  • The traps and power of smartphones

Improving content and writing effectively and efficiently

  • How to write a clear email
  • The foundations of written communication and features of fast composition
  • The importance of an email’s subject for the writer and the recipient
  • Formatting
  • Elements of an effective text: subject, introduction, content, conclusion
  • Types of message: informative, prescriptive, conversational or accompanying?
  • The tone of an email’s language
  • “Netiquette” and the unwritten rules
  • Three-part structure, the inverted pyramid method and the light and shade structure
  • Punctuation, capitalisation, abbreviations, acronyms
  • Attachments and links
  • Techniques for speed reading
  • The importance of rereading before sending
  • Automatic replies and templates
  • Superfluous and indispensable English

Corporate countermeasures to increased mail traffic

  • How many emails can I write per day?
  • Should I write at any time of the day/week?
  • Should I actually send my email to everyone I want to?
  • Is it really necessary to use email as an internal means of communication?
  • Moments of silence
  • Managing cultural change
  • Technological and infrastructural aspects to reduce the impact of email on a company

You will experience

  • How to reduce daily email traffic
  • Reading and understanding particularly detailed e-mails
  • Improving the form and substance of an ineffective email
  • Assessing the dangers and opportunities of forwarding an email.
  • How to structure a complex message for an e-mail network

Download the in-company training catalogue