Perspective on Email

We love email. No modern communication technology is as effective for capturing ideas and sharing them directly with others anywhere in the world. Like any technology, however, the power of email is not limited to benefits, but also to harm. Email can overwhelm us, threaten our ability to concentrate and become a source not of utility but of stress. To help maximize the positive impact of this technology, Slaughter Development has a unique perspective on email. We believe that email should never interrupt the flow of work.

Next Business Day

Internet technologies typically ensure that email is delivered almost instantly. However, we do not encourage our employees or our customers to check and respond to messages with the same immediacy. Reading and writing requires time and concentration. Email is too important to be reduced to an interruption, but a dedicated activity. Expect our response to your email the following business day, but no sooner. To maximize our dedication to the important work of our clients, we set aside time each day for email.

If you need an immediate answer or are facing an emergency, you may call us by telephone at 1-888-200-9387. Honestly, however, methodology engineering is the opposite of crisis management. One cannot usually rescue a broken process with a quick fix or a clever workaround. Slaughter Development holds the utmost respect for emergency response services in business, but we believe the best consulting advice comes when the pressure for an immediate response is removed.

Meetings for Discussion

Email is a terrible place to have a conversation.  Almost all of the time spent crafting arguments and responses, clarifying statements, and explaining the nuances of language could be saved with the oldest communication technology: speaking out loud. If we need to discuss an idea or review a proposal, it should be done with a verbal conversation. Email is a great way to schedule a time for discourse, but a tremendously unproductive medium for conversing about ideas.

Transitory Medium

Although an email message might sometimes feel like the final word on a topic, an email is almost always a piece of information on it’s way to another system. A request for action should be routed to a calendar or a task list, an appointment time to an event schedule, and a purely informational message should be read and recorded in a  summary report. After that, an email should be deleted.  We work to keep our inboxes at zero messages, and aim to help free our clients from the burden of unprocessed email.

Slaughter Development uses electronic mail for confirmation, status updates, and to ask and respond to simple questions. We respond to emails the next business day, but no sooner. When the conversation goes beyond what can be captured in the scope of an inbox, we ask for time for a meeting or conference call. If our perspective on email sounds refreshing and productive, consider reaching out to begin an engagement.