How to make group decisions by email

When you are trying to get a group to make a decision via email it helps to propose something concrete for people to respond to, rather than just starting an open ended discussion.

Here is someone trying to set up a get together for a group of mothers with young children via emails sent to a list of 8 people:

Joan: "Hi. I am hoping to get some people together on Sunday. I was wondering if anyone was up for a get together around 10. I am thinking a park or the zoo?"

Joan: "I should have asked before does 10 AM or 3 PM work better? I just assumed before nap is easier."

Mary: "10am for me. Did we pick a place yet?"

Polly: "Morning is also better for us. Do we have a confirmed time and place (and directions) yet?"

Joan: "As for places, I say either Jones Park or Smith Park (we have never been there before) or Greenberg Park. What works for you all?"

Betty: "We will be there at 10 am , what park are you thinking of?"

Kathy: "Im up for trying out a new park (Smith Park) but am fine with what ever the group decides. "

Joan: "I think a park is easiest. What is central to all of us?"

Betty: "Smith Park sounds good, 10am."

Joan proposes not only multiple options for times but also multiple possible venues. Notice that as time goes by she does nothing to converge the group down to a single place and time. The only reason closure was ever reached was that Betty took charge and picked a park and time for the group.

The lesson? When tying to set something up with a group of people by email you should not present the group with a number of decisions that need to be made. Give the group a complete proposal, "I am going to Smith Park Sunday, 10 am, and I hope some of you can join me" that people can either choose to accept, reject, or make a counterproposal. Sending an email to a group asking the group to make a number of decisions is a recipe for endless dithering.

Be conscious of the imitation factor

If you mindlessly copy how other people handle things, or fail to examine your habits, you will miss some opportunities to do things better.

Human beings tend to unconsciously use imitation as a tool for dealing with a lot of situations. They either imitate what they have seen other people do in similar situations, or they imitate what they themselves did the last time they faced a similar situation (Thats what habits are: Us imitating ourselves).

Imitation more or less works most of the time. Imitation allows you to gain the benefit of your own or other people's experience without re-inventing the wheel.

But sometimes what other people do in a particular situation is not the best thing for you to do in that situation. Maybe your values and preferences are different than most peoples, so what works for them doesn't work for you. Or maybe other people are just making stupid choices for unknown reasons. To paraphrase your mother: "Well, if Johnny jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?"

And sometimes the way you have always handled a particular situation in the past is no longer (if it ever was) the best way to handle that situation. Maybe your values and preferences have changed. Maybe your situation has changed. Maybe the first time you dealt with a particular type of situation you just made a stupid choice and then never revisited your decision.

The moral is, when you are making choices about how to get something done take a moment to step back and try to explain your decision to yourself as if you were explaining it to a stranger. If you find that your explanation for your decision sounds kind of stilted and shallow, or if it boils down to "that's just what I have always done" or "that's just what everyone does" then stop and take even more time to think through whether your decision is really the best possible in the circumstances, and whether there might be better alternatives. This process of re-assessing your habits, or the traditions of others, helps you spot inefficient or counterproductive habits and come up with new solutions that work better for you.

Configure your email program to work offline

Mozilla Thunderbird has this great feature called Work Offline. The way it works is that you click on the Work Offline icon and it downloads messages and then disconnects from the email server. Until you click the icon again, no new email messages show up in your inbox, and the emails you send go into a Unsent Messages folder. When you do go back online, all the pending emails in your Unsent Messages folder get sent, and all the new emails are downloaded.

So what's so great about that? The first time I noticed the Work Offline feature I remember thinking "Oh, I will never use that; It must be for people who want to work when they on airplanes or something" (and I am not one of those people; Airplanes are for catching up on New Yorkers). I forget what inspired me to try Work Offline for the first time, but when I did I immediately noticed two benefits.

The first was that I was able to focus on the task at hand much better without the distraction, and temptation, presented by new emails popping into my in-box. I don't know about you, but over time I have acquired an almost Pavlovian response to the little ding when a new email comes in. I drop everything, open up the new email, and then get sidetracked dealing with it. Of course with discipline its possible to train yourself to not respond to each incoming email, and if you have that discipline then good for you, but for me its easier to just remove the temptation.

The other benefit to working offline, which to me was completely unexpected, is that it is really handy to have all outgoing emails queued up in the Unsent Messages folder for a while before they actually go out. How many times have you sent an email, and then 5 minutes later realized that you forgot to mention something, or add the attachment, or you came across something that makes you realize that what you said in your email was wrong and you will have to send another email? With your outgoing emails queued up in the Unsent Messages folder its a simple matter to right click on the email, select "Edit as New," revise your email, re-send it, and then delete the old version.

Maybe I am ditzier than average, but there are times when I have revised a pending email 2 or 3 times before it actually goes out, typically because as I work through my email in-box I come across new information that makes me want to revise what I wrote.

Switch to two monitors

If you do a lot of work on the computer your productivity will be substantially increased by adding a second monitor. A second monitor reduces the amount of time you spend clicking around to switch between windows, and allows you to see and work on multiple documents at the same time.

Think about it: Would you even for one second consider using a physical desk that was 12" x 15"? Why not? Maybe because you don't want to spend all your time constantly reshuffling the things on your desktop to bring the current item to the top? If you wouldn't use a physical desk that small, why would you use a computer screen that small? Especially considering that you probably do a lot more of your work on your computer desktop than on your physical desktop.

I have been using two monitors for a year and a half now, and when I occasionally have to work using a single monitor I feel trapped and confined, and my productivity drops quite a bit.

The Pre-Printed Shopping List

Using a pre-printed shopping list can save you time, help you avoid running out of things, and reduce the energy and effort put into shopping. Here is how my family uses one.

We have a Word document with multiple columns with a section for every store we routinely go to (Costco, Trader Joes, Target, etc). Under each store's heading we list the things we routinely buy there, in the order they occur in the store when we are shopping, plus a number of blank lines to write in unusual purchases. We print this list out and keep it on a clipboard on the fridge, and whenever we notice that we are running low on something we immediately circle it on the list or write it in. Then, when its time for the weekly shopping run we review the routinely purchased items for each store to see if we need to circle any of them, and then head off to the store. At the store we just walk the aisles and grab the circled items as we come to them.

For me, the main advantage of this system is that you don't have to struggle to remember what you need when you are out shopping, and you don't even have to struggle to remember things when you are putting your shopping list together.

Another big advantage is that it cuts down on shopping trips. Because everything is so organized, we only make one shopping trip a week, and never have to run out to the store on short notice to pick something up. I find this saves a lot of time over the course of weeks and months.

A few people we know who have seen us using this list at the store have acted a little shocked by our level of organization. I admit that not many people are this organized about shopping, but then again many households spend a lot more time and energy on shopping than we do. There is only so much time each week to do the things we like to do, so to me it makes sense to streamline the routine tasks as much as possible to free up more time for other things.

Don't send an email to a group asking them to do something

I am constantly amazed how often I see otherwise intelligent people send out emails asking a group of people to do something. For example:

To: John, Susie, Bill
From: Braindead
Re: Annual report

Who is going to prepare the first draft of the annual report? Please let me know.

Thanks,

Braindead

It just can't end well when you ask a group to do a single task. Chances are all the people you sent the email to will assume that someone else is going to respond and ignore it. Or, two or three people will respond with different answers, which will trigger a cascade of follow-up emails to straighten out the inconsistencies. Either way, you are not moving forward. Asking a group to do something without identifying an individual to take the lead is a recipe for delay and confusion.

Instead, always send your email to a single person asking them to respond to your question or request, and copy the other people who need to know about it. For example:

To: Susie
Cc: John, Bill
From: Smartypants
Re: Annual Report

Susie, please let me know who will be preparing the first draft of the annual report. You should confer with John and Bill about who would be best to do this.

Smartypants

Now Susie knows she is expected to respond and your request doesn't fall through the cracks.