60 minutes to better email
Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Quick tips for better communication
Are you struggling to dig yourself out from an ever-growing inbox? Is that inbox full of open-ended questions and “quick pings” that are difficult to prioritize and address? Do you “hate email” but rely extensively upon it to communicate with your colleagues?
Join expert Matt LeMay to learn quick, actionable tips for using email in a more purposeful and manageable way. You’ll discover why those “quick questions” you’re sending and receiving may be wasting enormous amounts of time for your teams and colleagues and understand how to better balance asynchronous tools like email and collaborative documents with synchronous meetings and face-to-face discussions.
What you’ll learn and how you can apply it
By the end of this live online course, you’ll understand:
- Why emails that take such a short time to send can take so long to answer
- How asking for a few minutes of a person’s time can actually be less burdensome than a “quick ping” email
- How to manage and track the time you’re spending on synchronous and asynchronous communication
And you’ll be able to:
- Bring clarity to asynchronous asks with an email subject style guide
- Better understand when to use synchronous time such as meetings
- Ask for, and offer, specific and finite amounts of time
- Put structure around collaborative editing tools
This live event is for you because...
- You want to be more thoughtful and efficient in your use of email, whether you work onsite or remotely.
Prerequisites
Recommended preparation:
- Read Inbox to Zero
Recommended follow-up:
Schedule
The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.
Introductions (5 minutes)
- Lecture: Instructor introduction
- Hands-on exercise: Consult your inbox and find the message you've gone the longest without responding to; explain what has made that particular message challenging and why you've been unable to answer it
The asymmetry of email (15 minutes)
- Lecture: Identifying asymmetry
- Hands-on exercise: Find an email you sent asking for feedback or asking a “quick question”; explain how long it took to send this email and how many people received it; determine the total cost of time it took for everybody on the thread to respond to that message
Three steps to managing email (30 minutes)
- Lecture: Step one—recognizing that you have a problem; step two—be specific; step three—balance synchronous and asynchronous communication
- Hands-on exercises: Track the amount of time you spend on asynchronous communication like email versus synchronous communication like meetings; create an email subject style guide
Wrap-up and Q&A (10 minutes)
- Lecture: Steps to begin socializing these ideas with your colleagues; how to work with them to reflect on what is and isn't working and adjust course accordingly
- Q&A
Your Instructor
Matt LeMay
Matt LeMay is an internationally recognized product leader, author, and consultant. He is the author of Agile for Everybody (O’Reilly Media, 2018) and Product Management in Practice (Second Edition O'Reilly Media, 2022), and has helped build and scale product management practices at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. Matt is co-founder and partner at Sudden Compass, a consultancy that has helped organizations like Spotify, Google, Clorox, and Procter & Gamble put customer centricity into practice. Previously, Matt worked as Senior Product Manager at music startup Songza (acquired by Google), and Head of Consumer Product at Bitly. Matt is also a musician, recording engineer, and the author of a book about singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. He lives in London, England.