Email: such a common tool, so often misused.
This is a real email we received (with a few details changed to protect the sender’s dignity):
Full of undefined acronyms, inappropriate abbreviations, and unnecessary personal details, this email does not give me much reason to trust this company. The writer says, “If there’s anything not clear, pls feel free to contact me.” I’m not sure if I want to.
I can tell that this email came from a non-native English speaker, but I don’t think this is an acceptable excuse. I believe that anyone with a basic command of English can learn to write effective emails, with just a bit of training.
A few weeks ago Drew and I delivered a lunchtime training on Effective Email Writing to about twenty employees of a leading law firm. Our presentation followed this outline: 
I personally think the most important part of an email is the subject line. I used to work for a company that did email marketing for non-profit organizations, and we obsessed over subject lines. Email marketing, of course, generates more statistics than typical emails between colleagues or clients, but I think it’s lessons are still valid: your subject line should describe the content of your email in a specific, concise way.
Here are some good subject lines:
- Staff Meeting: Thursday 2pm
- English Classes for Customer Service Team
- YSYC termination of contract with EasySoft
- Nice meeting you at dinner Tuesday
I try hard to follow these rules myself, but sending a quick email is so easy that sometimes I get careless. About a month ago, I invited a good friend of mine to dinner on Wednesday, and she suggested we attend an event on Tuesday instead. I sent my RSVP to the event’s organizer, not realizing that the subject line said “Dinner Wednesday?” I had inadvertently invited a 60-something man I’d never met to dinner! I sent him a quick follow-up to clarify, and, no, he didn’t think I was asking him out. But still, I think this illustrates my point well.
The hilarious Dave Barry relates the hypothetical historical consequences of this hastiness in his funny review of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Home and Office:
Imagine, for example, how useful it would have been for Paul Revere. … Since Revere was typing with his thumbs, his e-mail probably would have said something like, “teh nritish are cming.” As a result the recipients might not have grasped the urgency of the message. The Concord patriots might have assumed it was mainly intended for the Lexington patriots, while Lexington might have assumed Concord was going to handle it, and we would still be British subjects today. I’m not saying that would be a bad thing; I’m just saying it was not what Revere meant to accomplish. [more]
What email writing tips would you add? What’s the most hilarious email you’ve received in a business setting?
-Leslie
Lately I’ve read two pieces that approach talent and training in China from completely opposite perspectives.
The first is Yanmei Xie’s recent piece for Asia Calling, “The ‘Ants” of China Struggle for Small Rewards”.
The second is China CEO: Voices of Experience from 20 International Business Leaders, by Juan Antonio Fernandez and Laurie Underwood.
Together, they tell me that China has thousands and thousands of college graduates. They compete for low-paying jobs in China’s cities, and lack the skills to be top-flight candidates for multinational companies. Thus, recruiting, developing, and retaining talent continues to be one of the biggest challenges for companies operating here.
Xie’s “Ants” piece describes this dynamic from the bottom. It begins:
There’s a group of people in China who are called the tribe of ants .
Like ants, they are of humble roots. Like ants, they work diligently for small rewards like bread crumbs.
Like ants, they live in big clusters in crammed spaces.
They are recent college graduates who flock to big cities seeking to improve their lives their families’ but find themselves in uphill battles. [more]
I find the following lines poignant, especially since I used to teach at a Chinese university that’s partly privately-run. 22-year-old Zhang Pei
worked in sales for an advertising company. He quit yesterday after a fight with his manager. …
Pei went to a private college in Beijing. Since China relaxed regulations on higher-institutions ten years ago, privately-run schools sprouted up.
They let many more people get college degrees, but their graduates are often valued less than those from better-known state-run universities.
“We are different from those who graduate from brand-name colleges. There are too many college graduates. I feel I am not capable enough and don’t have much skill, so I do feel somewhat helpless.” [more]
I thought about Pei’s expression of helplessness and desire for skills training as I re-read a book focused on the opposite side of the business spectrum: China CEO. It came out in 2006 (which happens to be the year I arrived in China) but I think its lessons are still relevant today.
Eli Lilly’s Christopher Shaw, who says the language classes he offers on company premises are well worth the investment, “This is something our employees value and something we value. We want to keep people and we want to promote people. It is very important. When they join my company, they say: ‘Eli Lilly is looking out for my future’”
The authors also point out an important caveat: the risk of “train and run.” This is something we’ve often heard in our meetings with human resources managers in China. Companies invest in training and struggle to communicate to employees that they expect something in return for this investment. One executive complains that staff members return from a training session and immediately start asking about the next, more advanced training.
The interviewees agreed that building employer-employee guanxi is the best defense against high staff turnover. Over and over, the authors heard that a workplace should be “like a family.”
I agree. I also believe that the best training is tailored to meet the companies’ needs as well as the individuals’ interests. Ideally, a training program can make the most of a tight budget, build ‘ants’ skills, make them feel like part of a family, and serve the company’s broader goals.
Yes, I know this sounds a bit utopian. What do you think?