EXECUTIVE BOOK REPORT
Taking Control of Communications
by Dwight tew
Do you remember your first e-mail? I do. I re- call praising the concept as though it was a gift from the heavens. After all, it would be
an enormous time saver for everyone. Now, rather
than calling someone on the phone and spending
the first few minutes with the appropriate formalities
or taking the time to walk to their office in some far
corner of the building, I could simply send a quick,
succinct message with the facts. Then, I would receive a similar message back, thus completing the
communications circuit.
Fast forward about 12 years and my reflections are
different. Most of our work day is now consumed
with e-mail—reading it, answering it, saving it in the
appropriate file for later reference, or deleting it. On
a larger scale, the problem with e-mail is a geometric one; everyone on the e-mail chain now feels the
need to “reply to all” so that everyone will know that
everyone else is paying attention.
It’s enough to make you feel like a hamster running continuously for eight or nine hours a day.
That’s the metaphor for the book, The Hamster Revolution by a trio of authors—Mike Song, Vicki Halsey,
and Tim Burress. Their observation is that when it
comes to managing information as promulgated in
e-mail, we’ve all acquired the persona of “a hamster
on a wheel … running faster and harder but getting
nowhere.” When we leave our computers to have a
quick lunch or to go home at night, we even take a
Blackberry or a similar communication device with
us—just in case we get e-mails requiring an immediate response, one that can’t wait until we finish a
meal, or pull into our driveway. Enough!
The authors remind us that our work lives are not
as consumed with problems of time management as
we suspect. Instead, the real culprit is information
mismanagement, largely as a result of maintaining,
organizing, categorizing, and indexing our e-mails.
Blackberry or PDA that you can answer later
when in the office
• The redundant e-mail that others in the organization will likely send to you
• The searchable information e-mail, such as
directions that you can easily look up online
When sending e-mail, trim the number of recipients to only those who are truly necessary and
limit the use of CCs and BCCs, as well as “Reply to
All.” A good tip from the book is to use NRN (No
Response Needed) or NTN (No Thanks Needed) in
the subject line. Make sure your teams understand
the nature and purpose of these acronyms.
dwight tew is vice
president of talent
solutions for Brookdale
senior Living based in
Brentwood, Tennessee.
cOtA strategy
Another part of the e-mail liberation equation is
managing messages you intend to keep. The authors recommend a system called COTA, which
stands for Clients, Output, Teams, and Admin. It
describes the four primary folders needed to hold
all business information and it defines a way to
store, search, and retrieve e-mails.
Using COTA, all information is categorized
by content, and working with only four folders
makes finding information much easier. Best of
all, the same COTA strategy can apply to every
place we store information. In the words of the
authors: “COTA will eliminate the mental friction
of multitasking” because there’s a single organizational system for whatever you’re seeking.
The authors delve into COTA best practices in
a lively and understandable manner that makes
this self-help-style tome simple to grasp and fun
to absorb.
e-mail control
Taking control of the e-mail monster is the first step
toward liberation. Get rid of “non-action” messages
that are truly unnecessary, such as:
• The FYI e-mail containing information that might
someday be helpful
• The trivial “thank you” message sent as a courtesy for something mundane
• The incomplete e-mail, a partial response via
into Practice
The suggestions and tips in The Hamster Revolution require some team training to master the concept and really maximize results. You might also
consider combined team training in cases where
a lot of cross-departmental work is required.
However, applying these principles even on an
individual basis can prove tremendously useful
to senior living executives who need to take control of their own e-mail deluge. That way, you can
get out of the proverbial hamster wheel and start
managing information instead of spinning endlessly
inside it. ❏
