Page 172 - The Voice of Authority

casional greeting card. If your e-mail to others doesn’t
command attention, it gets deleted or dragged into obliv-
ion with a click.
In my company’s latest survey of 658 respondents from
20 organizations, here’s what we discovered: Ninety-three
percent receive more than 10 e-mails daily. Twenty-five
percent receive between 30 to 50 e-mails daily. Another 24
percent of us receive up to 200 e-mails a day that have to
be “handled.” Seventy-nine percent say this glut of e-mail
costs them at least two hours a day. Forty-seven percent say
they’re spending up to three hours a day handling e-mail.
And one-fifth (21 percent) report spending four or more
hours per day on e-mail. (See Figure 9.1.)
To compound the problem of a crammed in-box,
many, if not most, e-mails are poorly written—often re-
quiring a second or third reading. The biggest com-
plaint, voiced by 47 percent of the respondents, is that
e-mails are disorganized, irrelevant, or contain incom-
plete information.
Clearly, your competency shows up in someone else’s
in-box. The ability to write well not only documents your
accomplishments—it also reflects your ability to think
clearly.
A side note: Those who
write better also make more
money. Several detailed stud- This report, by its very
ies have shown a clear corre- length, defends itself
lation between literacy and against the risk of being
income. Of the 1,000 largest read.
employers in the United —Winston Churchill
States, 96 percent say em- (Remark at a
ployees must have good com- Cabinet meeting)
munication skills to get

160 The Voice of Authority