Email: Our Best Advice

Email is a great tool - especially in a business like ours where most of the time people are geographically remote, and - due to other priorities - are not so easily able to communicate at the same time.

So where face to face = same time, same place, Telephone = same time, different place, Email = different time, different place. This matters because context (including place and time) critically shapes the message that is received.

And when it is accepted that the message that is communicated most by the body language, heavily by tone of voice and least by the words, it's easy to see that a written email may be sent meaning one thing and read meaning another.

If we define effective communication as "maximising the chance that the message received is the message intended to be received", then I would like to suggest that we consider as a team some "best advice to ourselves" regarding emails.