Professional Correspondence: Part 5: "WHEN" and Review

This post continues from Professional Correspondence, Part 4: HOW.
(Lost? Start here, with Part 1: Professional Correspondence)

How many times have you sent or received business correspondence after 10pm? From someone ostensibly on vacation? Over the weekend? I’m working with a consultant now who habitually sends submittal responses after 11pm on a Sunday. This person is based in Chicago, not in Shanghai.

It is important to recognize that the timing of a message has meaning just like the content or the medium of the message. Habitually sending correspondence long after business hours, during vacation, or over the weekend sends the message that your work life has greater priority than the rest of your life, and sets expectations that you are “on call.”



We aren’t firefighters. We aren’t “on call.” And as managers it is our responsibility to set the example in our offices to push back on this unlimited availability. Big crunches and short deadlines come up, but I see it as a failure on my part if my poor management allows this to happen day in and day out.

Setting expectations is such a critical part of business communication, and no small part of those expectations is responsiveness. How quickly will you respond to a client email or RFI? How long will you take to make updates in your calculations and drawings? What is your contractual obligation? What is “reasonable?”

Apart from contractual obligations, most expectations for responsiveness are subjective, and can vary from project to project and person to person. How can you teach your colleagues to prioritize, and help them balance expectations and boundaries?

The Eisenhower Matrix is one powerful tool to help prioritize. For those who aren’t familiar with this concept, the Eisenhower Matrix divides tasks into a two-axis grid. One axis is urgency, and the other is importance. Every task can then be assigned a quadrant: Urgent and Important, Not Urgent but Important, Urgent but Not Important, and Not Urgent and Not Important. These four quadrants each have a specific action as well. Urgent and Important says “Do It Now” - a crisis. Important and Not Urgent says “Schedule a Time To Do It” - a long-term goal. Urgent and Not Important says “Delegate to Someone Who Can Do It Now” - a distraction. And Not Urgent and Not Important says “Delete It” - a time-waster.

Figuring out how to fit each task into these quadrants is the hard part, but can be clarified by differentiating between Urgent and Important. As President Eisenhower is often attributed as saying, What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important. Urgent tasks are typically reactive and address short-term concerns; Important tasks are typically responsive and build toward long-term goals and values. Understanding how each of these quadrants impacts the others is just as critical - taking time away from the Urgent but Not Important distractions and Not Urgent and Not Important time wasters to put toward long term Important but Not Urgent goals means fewer Urgent and Important crises later down the road.


Let’s review the four questions: WHO, WHAT, HOW, and WHEN.

WHO refers to both writer and reader, and asks: Who are these people, and what is the background of each? Why is the background of each party important? Because that background dictates how the message will be transmitted and received.

WHAT refers to the content of the message, and asks: What is the message, and what language is being used to send the message? Why is the language important? Because that language dictates the efficacy of the message, and how likely it will get an appropriate response.

HOW refers to the medium of the message, and asks: How is the message being sent, and what does this medium convey in addition to the content of the message? Why is the medium important? Because the medium dictates the documentation of both sending and receiving parties.

WHEN refers to the timing and responsiveness of the writer, and asks: When is this message being transmitted, and what does this say about the expectations of responsiveness? Why are these expectations important? Because the expectations dictate the metrics to measure success.

And that’s the end goal of all of this work - we want to deliver the project successfully. We want to work with our colleagues toward this shared goal, and make the process go as smoothly as possible. These tools I’ve shared with you will help smooth that process.