Friday 15 October 2010

E-mail Protocols 15th October 2010.

We just had an example of evolution in action, it could have been embarrassing and it certainly ruffled some feathers – let me explain. I had a lot of experience in the 90’s with introducing e-mail into companies that had relied on letters, fax and telephone. In fact in one medium sized company I came up against a Managing Director who was certain it would never catch on. Despite the fact he was my line boss, and the guy who was trying to drag the company “kicking and screaming” into the current century let alone the next he just didn’t “get it”. Eighteen months later, at a management meeting he praised his own foresight in insisting on introducing e-mail because “we can’t survive without it”. Everyone else tried to hide their giggles with various degrees of success.



I tell you this for a simple reason, when introducing e-mail into a corporate environment the big buzz word was “e-mail protocol” – how you reacted to an e-mail when you received it. From my recent experience it is becoming clear, different parts of the world have evolved different protocols over the last few years in terms of what is the correct way to deal with such a missive.


The European protocol, as far as I am concerned, in a business sense, not a personal one, is to respond to an e-mail as if you were talking to that person on the phone, I don’t mean in terms of the language used, which perforce has to be more guarded, but as if the “conversation” is in fact in real-time.


Clearly the Antipodean response is drilled the other way – emphasising the asynchronous nature of the communication – a much more laid back approach.


A case in point.


One of our authors sent in a question to both of us, which in fact required two answers, one from me in respect of half of the e-mail, and one from my partner on the other half. Following that protocol I’d spend months drilling into other people I politely responded with an answer to my part (the easy bit) and noted that my partner would respond to the other half when she was able. Since the author is in Europe, as am I, so my response was very quick. My partner, 12 time zones away was of course, not so quick.


In fact her part of the answer needed some research with a third party, together with the time zone issue added up to a delay which exceeded the author’s tolerance who promptly fired off a chase e-mail. Unfortunately this chase e-mail arrived at the dog end of the day, where after a couple of glasses of wine the response was quite forceful. Oopsie!


So which is better, the uptight European style, where you send an apology if you can’t answer straight away and you even send back a short thank you when someone sends you the information you requested – or the laid-back Pacific approach where you do it when you can.


The jury is still out... even though I’m prejudiced here.



Maybe there should be rule along the lines of "don't drink and e-mail" too.

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