Inbox Zero

I’m an inbox-zero person. For those wondering what this means, this was how many emails I had going into the weekend.

That's right, folks! ZERO.

Some of you are thinking, “But Ted, you work alone and don’t have a real job. Who is emailing you?” 

That hurts! (But you aren’t wrong.) 

In contrast, nonprofit leaders are riding an avalanche of emails.

If you feel this pain, you may have researched filtering unwanted emails or mass unsubscribing.

Or perhaps you've considered my personal favorite: declaring inbox bankruptcy.

Symptoms Not the Source

These tactics could help you redeem your email for a while, but an overflowing inbox is a symptom of a deeper problem.

So many people have told me that if I want a quick reply (or a reply at all), I should text instead of emailing them.

I know some nonprofit leaders who did this and now have dozens and dozens of unread texts on their phones on a daily basis.

They can't keep up.

When one communication medium gets overrun, they switch to another without addressing the root cause. If you have ever tried to introduce a new communication medium like Slack to your organization, you understand the resistance that follows. 

“One more thing I have to check?!” 

Adding new channels is not the answer.

The problem is not the mediums; it's how we use them.

Common Scenario

Where are all these notifications coming from? Here’s a scenario that happens daily:

An Operations Director emails the CEO.

“Hey, I’ve attached the draft of the final report. Could you take a look and add your feedback?”

A few hours pass.

The Operations Director thinks: She’s swamped with email. I better send a message on Slack. 

She sends a quick followup message on Slack.

Ten minutes later, still no reply. 

Maybe she’s away from her desk. I better text her. 

The Operations Director sends a short text. 

“Hey, can you give me feedback on the final draft when you have a minute?”

This behavior is commonplace. The Operations Director has sent the same request across three platforms—email, Slack, and text—and hopes the CEO will respond soon.

This means three times the work for the Operations Director and three times the notifications for the CEO.

It also means that whatever medium the CEO responds in will become the thread where the conversation continues. It could be any of them! Weeks later, if they want to reference that discussion, where will they find it? They will need to search through emails, texts, and Slack.

This is why no one can find anything.

Why is this happening?

This organization has not established clear expectations about how they communicate.

When the Operations Director wants feedback from the CEO, they are unsure of three things:

1. When to expect a response
2. Whether the CEO will receive the message
3. Where the content belongs (which medium is the right one?)

Without a trustworthy process, the Operations Director will act from a place of anxiety and send three messages, creating more work for themselves and the person they want to collaborate with. Now multiply this daily occurrence by the number of people on your team, and we have a serious problem.

What to do instead

To prevent this, your team needs to answer the following questions for every communication medium in your organization: 

• What style of communication is expected in this medium?
• When can you expect a response from this medium?
• Which medium is right for this content?

Here’s an example of how you could build healthy expectations for communication at your organization.

These Rules Explained

For example, this organization decided to use Slack and Asana primarily for internal communication. Slack is for casual conversations and memes, but Asana is preferred for discussions about specific projects or tasks. When those conversations happen in Asana, the threads will stay connected to the work and context, which keeps everyone organized and helps people quickly find those discussions months after the fact.

This company chose to reserve email for discussions with external stakeholders, which greatly decreases the number of emails they send and receive.

Texting is reserved for personal use only! (Or emergencies like: "I’m locked out of the office and need you to unlock the door.") This leaves texting for family and friends. I like this rule because I don't think work should monopolize all communication mediums.

When someone writes in any medium, and the content is longer than 250 words, they must convert it to a document. This gives longer chunks of content a more reasonable response time (5 business days) and encourages team members to be either concise or patient. 😁 This emphasis on pushing long-form communication to documents will lead to a more substantial knowledge base that will help new team members onboard or people move around in the organization.

Different Outcome

With these rules in place, the scenario between the Operations Director and the CEO would have gone very differently. When the Operations Director wants to get feedback on a document from the CEO, they’ll create a task in Asana called “Review Final Report Draft” and attach the file to the task. Since they’re asking the CEO to review a document, they won’t expect a response for five business days.

The CEO will receive one notification in Asana and have all the context to do the work because the document is attached. If the CEO has feedback, she will provide it in the comments.

Two months later, if they need to return to the thread, they will know where to look for it, and all the context will be at their fingertips. If the Operations Director needs more immediate feedback, they can shrink the request size and ask for feedback sooner.

By articulating expectations for each medium in their organization, they improve communication, reduce wasted effort, and calm unnecessary anxiety. Sounds like a great place to work, eh? 

What about you?

Does this resonate with you? Does your organization have guidelines like this? If not, would they help you? I'd love your feedback. Just reply to this email!