The last few decades communication has changed dramatically. From fax and fixed line phones, now we have mobile phones, SMS, instant messaging, email and more. Basically now it is possible to have instant communication with anyone in the World. However being possible and doing it are not the same and unfortunately too many people abuse it. There are numerous studies that show that if you are interrupted from doing something you need 10-30 minutes to concentrate again (check this out). So if you get like 5 calls per day it means that you waste 25% of your time! That's a huge waste of time and money and very few people are actually paying attention!
Now to get some work done, you need to communicate with other people. However, you have to do it minimizing the impact for both you and the other party. My simple rules for this are:
- Except if you're getting a heart attack, send an email first. This give the chance to the other party to read it when they want and not get distracted. On the other hand check the email only in regular intervals (I'm guilty of breaking the rule, but that's what I try to do).
- If it's urgent (and I mean urgent!) and you're not getting a reply in email send an instant message to the work instant messaging app (like Skype).
- The above should cover 99.99% of cases. In the remaining cases:
- Send a SMS to let the other person know something is urgent and needs attention.
- Call her/him only if you don't get a reply.
Of course the rules above do not apply for normal office communication. It does not make sense to email the person next to you to ask for simple answer; common sense should prevail.
You may say this is reasonable, however what do do when my boss calls me? Or when a customer calls? Well, I don't have a silver bullet, but here are some guidelines. The people you communicate with, pretty much fall in one of the following groups:
- Subordinate - this is the easiest one. Make the rules clear to them and they will follow them :)
- Colleague - you can't make rules for them, but you can point it out. If they call you for something that can wait, say "Please email it to me, I'm busy right now". After some time, they should get the lesson.
- Superior - that's a tricky one. If he does not value your time, probably he's not the right boss to work for. However you can try and explain and if he's not listening, look for another job!
- Third party - except for customers (below), you can force standard email communication. There may be some exceptions, but on the long term you can settle with email.
- Customer - in the initial phase you can't do much. But once you have a contract in place be very careful about means of communication. Put a premium price for a call so it's worth the distraction.
In the end: Anytime you need to communicate with someone ask yourself: Does this requires a call? Can I send an email? Instant Message? SMS? If people would be more careful, I'm sure a lot of time and money could be saved!