mktg@msft

Overwhelmed by Email?

National Public Radio (NPR) Googled my blog posting called "Microsoft's Email Culture," and called to ask for an interview on how I deal with so much email.  Last week, I had a great interview with Morning Edition producer, Jim Wildman. 

Today, they ran a piece on Morning Edition, called "Overcoming E-Mail Overload at Work".  There's a link to the audio, where I speak briefly about some of the downsides of email. 

Here are some tips from Marilyn Paul, author of "It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys." 

Meet as a team to review e-mail use. Identify what works, what doesn't, and why. Create a trial period for improvement: Meet to discuss after a week.

Use subject-line protocols to speed communication: a.) No reply needed – NRN; b.) Thank you - TY; c.) Need response by date and time – NRB 10/30 3:00 pm; d.) Use subject line for whole message: Meet 10:00 10/30 Okay?

Determine who needs to be copied on what, what needs to be read, and what needs to be filed.

Keep e-mails short. Most should be no more than 1-10 sentences. Communicate your main point in the first sentence or two. Don't make readers work because you don't have time to focus.

Don't deliver bad news in an e-mail message. If it's urgent, pick up the phone. Use tone of voice to indicate concern, but not anger.

After two rounds of problem-solving on e-mail, pick up the phone.

Don't hide behind e-mail. Any sensitive communications should be done in person.

If you can't answer a request immediately, let the other party know when you can respond, or if you can't.

NO EMOTIONAL E-MAILS: To resolve a conflict, schedule a meeting or use the phone. E-mail arguments tend to be huge time-wasters. Never send a hasty, irritated response to an annoying e-mail -- jobs have been lost that way.

Microsoft's Email Culture

A few days back, I was listening to Michael Wolf's podcast about the incredible email-centric culture we've created here at Microsoft.  Maybe not so much Microsoft as all high-tech, I bet.  Either way, it's true that we get tons and tons of email. 

Our culture was built on individuals doing their jobs without a lot of personal interaction.  Employees are expected to know what to do, or figure it out largely on their own.  Teamwork and collaboration are being stressed more vigorously, but email remains the best tool when everyone is working on their own projects. 

From the day I arrived here, I was innundated with email.  But I recall clearly that 95% of it was from co-workers.  No spam (wow!).  No document attachments.  No funny cartoons from distant relatives.  And no heart-felt and utterly confidential solicitations from bank managers from Zimbabwe. 

Today alone, I got 284 emails that made it through our spam filters, including only 15 or so I would call spam.  100 or so were sent to alises I've joined, and well over 100 had my name in the TO box, with something for me to respond to or do.  No matter how hard I try, I can't keep my inbox under 300-500. 

Michael wonders aloud how we can get so much email when all our co-workers are in meetings all day long!  You only have to peek your head into any conference room to see laptops and tablets and smartphones and Pocket PCs in front of nearly every attendee. 

Multi-tasking squared. 

I'm not complaining.  Well, maybe I am, because there have been days when I've been completely overwhelmed by email, disorganized by a "to do list" 500 entries long, unsure of what should be next.

But over time, and hundreds of thousands of emails, I've learned a trick or two. And though I don't practice them all like I should, here are my favorite email tips:

• Remember, your Inbox is your Inbox.  It's not your To Do list.  You don't use your paper inbox as a filing system, do you?  (Okay, maybe you do.  So how's that working for you, anyway?)
• Block out time to "process" email.  And when you do, "process" it.  Don't spend more than a minute or two on an email--and don't start down the road of firing off two or three emails for everyone you get, or diving into a project after you get to email 13 ("oh, ya!  I owe him a project plan!" or "I should blog about that...").  Put it on your To Do list, and keep processing your inbox.  If you can't do that, there may be other kinds of help available.
• Don't use your email as a filing system.  And for heaven's sake, don't rescue a co-worker who is looking for something you happen to have tucked away in an email folder.  Let them rescue YOU!  If someone else owns a document/plan/conversation, let them store it for you.  Chances are if you need it, someone else has it.
• Use SharePoint/fileshares for what they're for.  Notice that both words have a common root: "share."  You can't share what's stored on your hard drive (well, easily anyway).  Don't use email as a content management system. 
• Get Lookout or MSN Desktop Search if you're hopelessly hooked on using Exchange and your email folders as a filing system, Don't waste another minute "looking for that file" you know you got back in August. 
• DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR TASK LIST! (It's the one I have the hardest time with.) Once you've cleaned out your inbox, nicely categorized and prioritized your Task list, don't forget to use it. If you do, you'll soon have a long "To Do" list, and a full Inbox, not exactly an improvement on the situation. 
• Ignore Incoming Email until you have time to process it.  Can you imagine if snail mail was real-time?  Would you wait by your house's mailbox, and open each piece of junk mail as it came in?  Thank goodness it only comes in once a day!  And even though you pick it up daily, I bet you process that "inbox" only a few times a week.  Change your default view on Outlook to open to your Calendar and Task List, rather than your Inbox.  Turn off the popup toast and reminder sound when email comes in.  Don't respond immediately to each incoming email. 
• Pick up the phone once in a while.  You'd be surprised at how much you can get done in a phone call rather than on email. 

Okay.  Now that I've personally broken every one of the rules above today, I should get back to my Inbox.  I'm down to 543 emails...

Instant Messaging at Work

One of the things my team is responsible for is collaboration between employees in our division. As part of our rollout of SharePoint 2.0, we’re encouraging employees to use Windows Messenger. Those already using Instant Messaging get why it’s a good thing. Increasingly, I’m able to get things done using Messenger at my desk or in meetings, rather than using email. In fact, I’m monitoring incoming email less and less, and relying on IM more and more.

Those that have been using IM for a while know there’s a separate set of rules for instant messaging. And it’s pretty easy to spot those that are new to it by the way they use it. So how should IM be used in businesses?

David S. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group recently addressed this exact topic, in an article called Instant Messaging at Work: Key Policies and Practices for Leveraging IM in Business.

“More and more businesses are beginning to see the use of instant messaging (IM) as an interesting—if not compelling—way to make their organizations more responsive and effective. By using IM, particularly its presence-awareness features, companies can significantly reduce the time it takes to deal with customer issues, sometimes resolving them in real time. Effective use of IM can also eliminate much of the internal churning (emails, voice mails, walks past someone’s office) it takes for one employee to get information and assistance from another. And for many companies, IM provides a direct mode of communications with their customers—a mode that enables far closer relationships than we’ve seen since electronic communications became the norm.”

David recommends that companies establish policies in several areas: Expectations of privacy and responsiveness; Logging in; Availability; and Courtesy and Respect. I’ll summarize many of his thoughts (I’ve starred those), and add a few of my own.

1. Load the client when you’re online and working. Collaborative software doesn’t work if everyone doesn’t use it.*
2. Use the Status features of your client: Available, Busy, In a Meeting, On the Phone, etc.* David’s got some great tips on this topic.
3. If “available,” reply promptly (David recommends 2-10 minutes, depending on your business). *
4. It’s okay to say “I’ll reply later” or “Sorry, not now.” *
5. If you leave a message, and someone becomes “busy” without responding, and you get your question answered, reply “never mind”*
6. If you have more than a simple request (“is the document you sent final?”), “knock” by saying “got a minute?” or something similar.*
7. Don’t use IM to replace email. If you need to include more than a line of text, use email.
8. Don’t use email to replace IM. If it’s a quick question (“ready for lunch?”), don’t clog up their Inbox.
9. Don’t be too chatty. If a conversation is taking more than a few responses back and forth, pick up the phone.
10. Don’t be afraid to end the conversation if you got your answer. “Instant” messaging should be quick in and quick out.
11. It’s good to end the conversation with “bye” or “cya” or whatever you choose.*
12. If someone’s typing (you can usually see they are with a status indicator), wait for their response before changing the conversation.*
13. You might choose to turn off “notify when someone comes online” unless there’s a need. As the technology gets widely adopted, you may get a bunch of these, and if everyone’s online, you won’t need to see their status until you need to IM them.
14. I have separate clients for work (Windows Messenger) and personal (MSN Messenger). I have both running at work (though when really busy I’ll only have work client running), but on weekends, I only load my personal client.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to this, and if you have tips, let me know!

In the meantime, you can IM me at johnporcaro@hotmail.com (or my work email if you’re using Windows Messenger behind the Microsoft firewall).

Getting Things Done!

Thanks largely in part to fellow blogger Robert Scoble, David Allen (along with his associates Eric Mack and Jason Womak) has a blog! I'm looking forward to supplanting one of the only newsletters I actually read with a daily RSS dose of GTD goodness.

I'll start this post by crying HELP! I've managed to (once again) dig myself into a 544-email deep Inbox hole, but I'm determined to process everything by the end of the day!

In the David Allen Productivity Principles newsletter I just got, I read with fascination an article written by Julie Daniel, called "Keeping Your Inbox Real". She outlines six common types of email she sees in her client's Inboxes:

"First of all there is the e-mail that they’ve read and there’s no action associated with it and they don’t need to keep it for reference. It shouldn’t really be in there any more because it’s finished with and it should have been deleted. But… they haven’t got round to deleting it yet. So, for now, it’s just sitting there…

Second is the e-mail that they’ve read and there’s no action associated with it but they think they may need to refer back to it at some later date. That one really shouldn’t be in there any more either because it should be filed away somewhere. But…they haven’t got around to filing it away yet. So, for now, just sitting there…

Third is the e-mail that they’ve read and they’ve decided there is an action on it but they haven’t quite decided what that action is yet. The e-mail is parked there as a reminder that they need to do something about it… once they figure out just exactly what it is that they want to do. So, for now, it’s just sitting there…

Fourth is the e-mail that they’ve read and they’ve decided that there is an action on it and they have actually decided what it is that they want to do but they just haven’t quite got round to doing that action yet. The e-mail is parked there as a reminder that, when they get some time in between all those meetings that they have to go to, they really need to do that action that they’ve decided to do. So, for now, it’s just sitting there…

Fifth is the e-mail that they’ve read and they’ve figured out what it was that they needed to do about it AND they’ve actually done that action. But now someone owes them a reply and so the e-mail is parked there as a reminder that they have done something but the game isn’t over yet because somebody owes them something back and they might need to chase it. And if they lose sight of the e-mail they might forget that the thing isn’t finished yet. So, for now, it’s just sitting there…

Sixth – and this is the only type of e-mail that really belongs in an in-box – is the one they haven’t read yet.

WOW! No wonder most people’s brains hurt when they look at their in-box."

Active Listening (and Reading)

Piers Young wrote a post called Listening and Anecdotes. Something he said made me realize that getting great advice is one thing, actively thinking about it and doing something with it is something else! He quotes one of the pieces of advice I reported earlier:

"Your team should not just "listen" to customers, they should SYSTEMATICALLY listen to customers. Otherwise it's just a bunch of anecdotes."

He goes on to list ways that he can listen better to some of the stuff he's reading in blogs. Great advice!

"For customers read blogs and I think it works equally well. You shouldn't just "listen" to blogs, you should systematically listen to blogs. It's one of those things that's been nagging at me recently: I enjoy learning from other bloggers, and I love the serndipity of it all, but I feel I could be getting a lot more out of it. While some of that may come down to better tools, the like of which I can only imagine, my gut feeling is that at least as much comes down to a little more method on my part.

How to be more systematic? Lots of ways probably. Here, in no particular order, are a few that I'm going to try:

1) Note down the topics.
- It's easy to hop around - you find an interesting post, you read it, you click the link, you find another interesting post further down the linked to page and you're off topic in a flash. So from now on, if something's interesting, then I'm going to jot down the topic - however vague - and either follow that topic now or later, but follow it. Furling may be a godsend.

2) Box in time to roam free
That said, the "follow every topic" hopping around gets you places you might never otherwise go. But I'm going to try doing it for e.g. half an hour each morning - no more.

3) Learning includes yesterday's news
I don't think I have ever systematically gone through a prolific or long-term bloggers posts. There are a load of you out there whose feeds I subscribe to, but as a listener, you didn't exist for me before syndication. And if I enjoy or find your posts useful now, why shouldn't I find good things pre-syndication? Not sure how long this one might take, though.

4) Think my own thoughts first
This is really important. I remember a syndrome when I started doing philosophy as an undergraduate: I could quite happily read one view, go "yup, makes good sense", then read another view, diametrically opposed to the first, and agree with that too. There are times when I find myself doing that with blogs too.

5) Periodic "after-blogging reviews"
At the end of this month - pretty much my three month anniversary - I'm going to have a go summing up what I've learnt so far, listing where I'm getting side-tracked, what I've forgotten about etc. And three months may be a good cycle to repeat this on."

KM World Trip Report

I just sent my trip report from KM World to my team at work, and thought I'd share. Enjoy...

We recently attended KM World and Intranets Conference in Santa Clara.

We presented in a session called "Grass Roots Intranets in a Corporate World."

We all took pages of notes, but rather than have you read all of that, we digested everything into the top things we learned (or already knew and agree with). Enjoy.

1. Executive sponsorship a must. For any project that spans several groups (especially divisions), having managers support efforts is critical. Many attendees commented that lack of executive support often led to failed projects.

2. Governance must be distributed to team members, and made part of review objectives. Those who are responsible for creating, updating, and maintaining information have to have some stake in the success of the shared resource. This is best achieved by giving ownership of the project to everyone at some level.

3. Search is key. By its nature, diverse content can’t exist everywhere someone would first think to look. Search has to be pervasive, easy, accurate, and powerful.

4. The shared vision of a successful Intranet model revolved around having multiple views (personal, group, functional, location, corp). SharePoint is one of many tools that create a “digital dashboard” for employees.

5. Intranets are all about information flows, not just posting content. Intranets shouldn’t be thought of as “web sites,” but rather as a part of a larger content management/knowledge-information management system.

6. A good Intranet will “give people answers, not documents.” It’s not about technology, that’s only a small part of it.

7. A good intranet content strategy revolves around three things: Business requirements, Information architecture, and Metadata.

8. Process mapping can help identify unmet needs. Most solutions start with looking at as-is processes, identifying knowledge needed at specific points and filling the gaps. Our team is focused on learning how information flow works, understanding the pain points of employees, and working to create tools to meet those needs.

9. The success of a portal can be measured by connecting people to content, connecting people to people, connecting people to experts. Scorecard should be aligned with key performance indicators. Tools should reduce operational costs, improve revenue, improve cycle times, reduce risk of litigation and improve compliance.

10. A good Knowledge Management strategy can be cost-effective and meets organization goals: It can:
• Drive Innovation through better collaboration
• Capture and retain Organization Memory
• Reduce duplication of effort
• Decrease time to market

11. What are typical management expectations of portal?
A. This is a one time investment
B. We would recover costs immediately
C. We would be able to attribute increased revenues
D. Customer sat would increase immediately
What is the reality?
A. Owning and maintaining a portal is an ongoing investment
B. Difficult to calculate ROI
C. Customers have to be retrained before satisfied

12. A good Intranet can be designed to enhance collaboration
• Shared vision and shared tools can lead to shared ways of working
• Flexible, targeted real-time communication helps: Top down, bottom up, horizontal, one-to-many, one to some.
• Effectiveness and productivity through appropriate standardization and centralization
• Consistent and transparent communication between management and employees can build trust
• In defining the user architecture and navigation, the key determiner is his/her perception of the corporation. Each person must see how they fit in and be able to relate what they do to the big picture. The portal can help that.
• “When you have the same look and feel, people are more open, more sharing, more innovating and that is tremendous.”

13. Lots of things need to be investigated, discussed, and decided when making International portal key decisions:
• Role of HQ vs subs
• How people and teams are defined (roles, responsibilities, rights)
• Scopes of different sites (country, biz, team, Communities of Practice)
• Standardization: tools, graphic guidelines, processes, content standards, language
• Virtual teams, meetings, and project spaces play and even stronger role internationally. Intranet plays key role in handling issues with language, structure, etc.
• Structure e-meetings to make them short, efficient, and participatory
• Facilitating participation for non-native speakers
• Balancing different meeting and communication behaviors
• Setting up project workspaces for teams, centralization vs. decentralization, languages/translation policies, common corp language

Grass Roots Intranets in a Corporate World

I'm posting my presentation from KM World.

Grass Roots Intranets in a Corporate World (4MB)

KM World

We are at KM World in San Jose this week. We get the pleasure of hanging out with other knowledge management gurus and students, to hear about the latest in using tools to help employees work better together.

I am speaking Wednesday (D-203), sharing our story of creating a grass-roots Intranet site as part of a larger corporate environment. As soon as we finish up the slides, we'll post them here.

Bring Your Questions in Advance

David McNamee has some tips for attending a conference, that includes bringing a pen, having spare laptop batteries, and giving good feedback. Here's my favorite, that I think lends itself nicely to any group meeting, like all-hands meetings with executives.

5. Before each session, think of two questions that you want answered about the topic. For example, "what new UI widgets are available in the Visual Studio toolbox with Longhorn," or "do WinForm apps targeting Longhorn run gracefully on Win98." You get the idea - just don't go in with a completely empty canvas. You're likely to learn more while hunting for specific answers than by just sitting back and letting all that information passively flow over you.

In addition to making you a more active participant, it also has the advantage of giving you an intelligent question to ask during the Q&A period. As a conference speaker, there's nothing more awkward than asking for questions, only to have the first 30 seconds greeted with silence. Having someone jump right up shows that the person is listening and interested. And some of the best parts of a meeting are the ad hoc answers by the speakers.

Coaching Knowledge Workers (not "managing knowledge")

Shawn Morrissey sent me a link to a post by Jim McGee, called A shift from managing knowledge to coaching knowledge workers.

"This shift in perspective is relevant to understanding why so many knowledge management efforts have failed and why focusing on managing knowledge work is likely to be more fruitful.

The fatal flaw in thinking in terms of knowledge management is in adopting the perspective of the organization as the relevant beneficiary. Discussions of knowledge management start from the premise that the organization is not realizing full value from the knowledge of its employees. While likely true, this fails to address the much more important question from a knowledge worker's perspective of "what's in it for me?". It attempts to squeeze the knowledge management problem into an industrial framework eliminating that which makes the deliverables of knowledge work most valuable--their uniqueness, their variability. This industrial, standardizing, perspective provokes suspicion and both overt and covert resistance. It also starts a cycle of controls, incentives, rewards, and punishments to elicit what once were natural behaviors.

Suppose, instead, that we turn our attention from the problems of the organization to the problems of the individual knowledge worker. What happens? What problems do we set out to solve and where might this lead us?

Our goal is to make it easier for a knowledge worker to create and share unique results. Instead of specifying a standard output to be created and the standardized steps to create that output, we need to start with more modest goals. I've written about this before (see Is knowledge work improvable?, Sharing knowledge with yourself, and Knowledge work as craft). In general terms, I advocate attacking friction, noise, and other barriers to doing good knowledge work.

This approach also leads you to a strategy of coaching knowledge workers toward improving their ability to perform, instead of training them to a set standard of performance. In this respect, knowledge workers are more like world class athletes than either assembly line workers or artists. There are building block skills and techniques that can be developed and the external perspective of a coach can help improve both. But it's the individual knowledge worker who deploys the skills and techniques to create a unique result."

Wow. This actually sheds some light on the "deer-in-the-headlight" look our team gets when we talk about this stuff. One of the tactics we've employed in describing what our team does is to get co-workers to talk about the pain they feel when they have to share or find information. There are too many steps to take to post stuff, and more importantly, too many places to look for relevant information or people. When we break it down to identifying the problem, and coming up with a solution that meets their individual needs, it all makes sense to them.

Nobody wants to "manage knowlege", they want to get their work done with less effort and better results.