Let me know if this cycle sounds familiar:
- Spend money on food.
- Don’t use the food.
- The food expires.
- Throw the food away.
Let’s try to think of our interactions the same way. We let opportunities to learn and engage expire before we use them. Like our food, these opportunities can become moldy, distracting and unnecessary.
E-mails. Phone calls. Tweets and mentions. These pile up, and many go un-responded to and grow moldy. If we eventually get around to some of these responses, we’re serving up meals with moldy ingredients, leaving our audiences and partners with a bad taste in their mouths.
There’s a sunk cost element here. We don’t spend money on these messages, but we pay for them in different ways. When a partner takes the time to craft and send a message, it’s because they need, want or trust our input. Each time an answer comes too late (or never), that credibility is slightly damaged.
We may not respond to everything, but we should respond to everything we’re going to respond to. Some tips:
- Be deliberate with the things you aren’t going to respond to. Don’t try to fool yourself into holding onto to a message if you can’t make a plan (and time) to respond.
- Delegate, donate or discard things you won’t use, before they expire. Can’t make time to help someone? Connect them with a different resource while the request is fresh. Moldy communication is no good to anyone. If you have it, get it off your desk early.
- Don’t buy food—or accept communication—you won’t use. Condition your partners for the type of projects and information that drive action. Trim your schedule and distribution lists down to the mission-focused elements.
- Put like foods together. Have three unrelated messages from the same person? Make time to address all three, face to face. Have three related messages from different people? Connect the group and get everyone talking.
- Freeze your leftovers. Don’t know if or when you’ll get to some request or reading? Shelve it in an appropriate manner, so you know how to activate it if you must.
- After you’ve taken the steps above; always respond to everything left.
(Truth: E-mails in my inbox grew moldier because I wrote this blog post instead of replying)
(Photo by Terrance Bell, DVIDS)
