Q: What are the four most dangerous letters in business?
A: SEND
- Roger Goff, Partner, Wolf Rifkin Shapiro Schulman and Rabkin LLP
According to Ken McLeod, Executive Director of Unfettered Mind, providing strategic interpersonal consulting for senior executives and Huffington Post blogger:
1. When people are sending email, their brains, bodies and minds are all keyed to interaction not with a person but with a machine, because what they have in front of them is a machine. Thus, they easily say or do things that they would not normally do with a person, including firing off thoughts without thinking. You can yell at a machine without fear of consequences and you can treat a machine unthoughtfully without fear of consequences.
2. The speed of the technology creates a false sense of urgency. People feel that they have to act and react with the same speed of the technology. Thus, instead of taking time to think about a reply (as they would with a letter), they just dash something off as quickly as possible.
3. Closely linked to number two is anxiety generated by not responding quickly. As emails come in to one's inbox, there is a definite sense of relief (probably linked to brain chemistry) connected with disposing of emails: one has responded in the conversation. Thus, hitting the send button is connected with experiencing relief, again, a stimulus for getting them out as quickly as possible.
Rx: to prevent premature emailulation:
1. First email it to yourself without sending it to the intended party. That's because you gotta send it somewhere (according to everything Ken McLeod laid out above).
2. My friend and business partner, Bill Liao, then suggests that upon receiving the email from yourself ask yourself, "What is the intended outcome that I wish when the recipient receives this email?"
3. Bill then advised you to ask yourself, "Do I really believe that this email will move the recipient towards the intended outcome that I desire? If so, what is my evidence for that? If not, what could I do differently to achieve that outcome?"