September 13, 2021

I hope everyone’s semester is off to a great start.  It’s been nice seeing folks around.  But please be safe and continue to adhere to the University’s guidance.  Our community is taking the pandemic seriously and acting responsibly, but some have still been directly impacted by COVID.  Please continue to mask, maintain social distance, and get vaccinated.  I also want to thank everyone who has stepped up to support gaps in our team due to quarantine or isolation requirements as a result of colleagues being exposed directly or having a family member who has been.  We’ll get through this, but we’ll do so much more effectively by supporting each other.

Changing subjects entirely, in today’s message I want to remind folks of some best practices related to e-mail communication that I think we all might benefit from thinking about (especially at the start of the semester).  I bring this up for two reasons. First, because of some administrative changes at Ohio State, my inbox is filling up with bureaucratic tasks like I’ve never seen before at Ohio State and it is really grinding me down keeping on top of the e-mail workflow so improving our community e-mail efficiency might be helpful for all of us dealing with similar inbox management challenges; and second, I do observe or learn of instances where there could be improvement in e-mail communication so recognize a need for improvement in our community.  In no order particularly, here are some thoughts.

• Be sensitive to who you are including on your message directly or as a cc.  There are many instances where you can probably simply reply to sender and not reply all.
• Be professional and be sensitive regarding your tone.  I think our community is doing a pretty good job in this regard, but it is helpful to be attentive to this need.  I’ve had several instances where I’ve written a message while frustrated but have been thankful, I maintained my professionalism and the matter was resolved without muddying the situation with hurt feelings or personal regrets.  I also can write very terse and direct e-mails at times, which can be misconstrued as harsh, so I personally have to work to take the edge off.  Maybe some of you have the same problem.
• A phone call can often reduce the back and forth and resolve matters quickly.  Since many of you are back in the office, talking face to face can help as well.  While a back and forth might involve short replies, the cognitive disruption of back and forth can detract from other productive work.  Similarly, long messages can also be taxing (both to the sender and the reader) and might be best resolved face to face.  I know I can be guilty of longish messages, so personally need to improve in this area.
• Also, never assume that your e-mails are confidential.  We all know this, but it is very easy to forward an e-mail message so write accordingly.

Another area where I am struggling is effective collaboration through our various cloud-based platforms.  Just when I thought I was getting the hang of BuckeyeBox, they retire it.  I’m still trying to figure out Teams and I do not yet understand how to use OneDrive.  And people seem to have personal preferences for one approach over the other, creating possibly some challenges for collaboration. If any of you have good insight or resources regarding how to effectively use these tools, please share and perhaps we can explore some educational sessions this fall.

If improving our internal communication efforts could save us each one minute a day, for a community of faculty, staff and graduate students that is close to 200 in total, that would save us collectively over 16 hours a week and over 800 hours in a year.  My guess is that for some of us, the time savings could be considerably higher than one minute a day through more effective communication.