How
To Add An Hour To The Day With Only One Small Change
I got my first office job
in my early twenties.
For four months between
school years in college I held the sexy job title of “summer intern” at a big
consulting company in a downtown high-rise. Casey was my boss and the head of
the project I was assigned to for the summer, which was for one of the world’s
largest oil and gas companies.
One Monday morning, I was
sitting in his glass-windowed corner office with the rising sun beaming onto
the desk between us. More than three months of late-night stress and working on
weekends had finally rolled up to right now.
We were minutes away from
our big presentation.
Casey’s sense of humor
had carried me through all the challenges and Chinese take-out boxes leading up
to today, but he had just asked me a last-minute question that made me snap. My
nerves were frayed. I had no energy left.
“Why do we have an
assumption in here instead of an actual figure?” he asked.
“Because Roger didn’t
write back to my three emails asking him for the right number and he never gave
us a number where we could call him. I tried his assistant twice and never
heard back, either. It’s like he forgot we existed. You know that.”
Roger was the highly
touted CEO of the oil and gas company who everybody looked up to. He was
highlighted in flashy magazine articles and known as a people leader who
espoused work-life balance while nonchalantly beating his numbers every year.
Meanwhile, employees at the company told us he ate lunch in the company cafeteria,
drove a beat-up truck to work, and had dinner with his kids every night.
The man was a legend.
After our introductory
meeting three months back I wrote Roger an email summarizing our meeting and
next steps. He didn’t write back. I then took my laptop home every night in
case Roger emailed with an urgent question or request. I checked email every
half an hour just in case the CEO of the company ever emailed late at
night asking for a project update the next morning. Just so if he ever needed
something, anything, I’d be there.
But…there was
nothing. In three months of working for him he didn’t write me a
single email. He didn’t write Casey any emails, either. We dropped a few
questions along the way but never heard back. And I had just told Casey my messages
to his assistant weren’t returned, either. Now suddenly it was time for our big
presentation and Casey was questioning why I didn’t have certain numbers.
I steadied my nerves as
we stepped into the boardroom where Roger was sitting and chatting with our
company president. He smiled and got up to shake our hands and thank us for the
work we’ve done. “I’m so excited,” he said with a big grin. “I can’t tell you
how much I appreciate how hard you’ve been working. You guys are geniuses. I’m
going to learn so much from this chat.”
The anger I felt about
his unresponsiveness suddenly melted. I felt like a million bucks.
We jumped into the
presentation and had a great discussion. It was casual, engaging, and open. He
loved it. And I couldn’t believe how relaxed everything felt. He was talking to
us like old friends. After the meeting was done there was so much trust between
us. So as we were packing up, I thought about it for a split second, and
decided to ask him one last question.
I couldn’t help myself.
“Roger, thanks so much
for today. We had trouble checking some numbers by you in advance. And I know
we didn’t hear from you on the additional questions we had. So, just for my own
learning, can I ask why you don’t write or respond to emails? How do you do that?”
His eyes opened a bit and
he seemed surprised by the question. But he wasn’t fazed.
“Neil,” he said, “there’s
a problem with email. After you send one the responsibility of it goes away
from you and becomes the responsibility of the other person. It’s a hot potato.
An email is work given to you by somebody else.”
I nodded, thinking about
all the emails I got from Casey and co-workers.“I do read emails, but the ones
looking for something are always much less urgent than they seem. When I don’t
respond, one of two things happens:
1.
The person figures it out on their own, or
2.
They email me again because it really was important.
“Sure, I send one or two
emails a day but they usually say, ‘Give me a call,’ or, ‘Let’s chat about
this.’ Unless they’re from my wife. I answer all of those.”
I was very confused.
How was the CEO of a
multibillion-dollar company with thousands of employees not emailing?
He paused to look at me
and sensed I didn’t get it.
“You know what,” he
continued. “Since I don’t write many emails, I don’t receive many either. I
probably only get five or ten emails a day.”
Five emails a day? Here I
was working at a consulting company writing emails morning,noon, and night. It
was the same for everyone. “My inbox has seven hundred emails,” my coworkers would
say and sigh. “I did emails all Sunday afternoon.” There was no way around it.
After all, our bosses sent urgent emails at 7:00 a.m. Saturday, late
Sunday afternoon, or 11:00 p.m. Friday. I knew this was common in my
company and others. McKinsey had even reported that office workers spend on
average 28% of their time answering email. Almost a third. And Baydin, one of
the world’s largest email management services, says the average person gets 147
emails a day. We were all attached to our cell phones and computers, firing
emails around, working hard to get everything done. It was part of the job. And
we all wanted to do a good job.
Suddenly it started to
click why Roger was known to come to have lunch in the cafeteria with employees
every day and drive home for dinner with his family every night.
He didn’t respond to hot
potatoes.
He didn’t write back to
emails and create email chains.
I looked up at Roger
again, and he continued.
“Most of the time Neil,”
he continued, “people really do figure it out on their own. They realize they
know the answer, they keep on moving, they develop confidence for next time.
They become better themselves. Your assumptions in the slides today weren’t
perfect, but they worked perfectly well and you learned by doing them. Don’t
get me wrong. I sometimes walk over to chat with a person or pick up the phone.
But if I wrote back to the email, I’d be sending a hot potato. And nobody wants
to be asked by the CEO to do something…never mind on an evening or weekend.
Why? Because people would drop everything to reply. And they would expect me to
reply to that. Basically, if I sent an email, it would never end.
“So I end it.”
·
Posted
by: Neil Pasricha
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