T I M E M A N A G E M E N T
to the boss why your report caused the client to cancel the contract.
No amount of time or effort will salvage your damaged reputation.
Even simple typos make your judgments questionable and your
reasoning suspect. For important documents, employ a colleague or
friend to edit, and then listen and take seriously any criticism. It’s too
easy to pass off the opinion of someone by telling yourself that he just
doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say. Exactly. Others won’t
either. Build time into the schedule for this edit and the rewrite.
A Few Cautions About Instant Writing
We’ve come a long way from the days of communicating with
letters chiseled on stone tablets or scrawled with sticks in the dirt.
Today’s preferred method, e-mail, offers so many advantages and
is so firmly entrenched in business culture that it’s impossible to
conduct business without it. But in view of the suggestions for good
business writing we just discussed, it’s worth noting several char-
acteristics about e-mail that counter these writing techniques.
E-mail liabilities include:
- Because you can send it so fast, you can send it too fast (and
wish you hadn’t).
The need for speed, enabled by the e-mail medium, encourages
us to write without considering a message’s effect—on the recipi-
ent, on others who receive a copy, or on others unknown to you
who may be copied now or at a later time. It’s worthwhile to take
a moment to think about a message’s tone—ask a colleague if the
topic warrants it—before firing off that reply. - A “private” e-mail message is not private.
Paper has a way of falling into the wrong hands sometimes,
too. The problem here is that e-mail creates the illusion of privacy.
But the e-mail system is a business resource, and all the messages
sent are the property of the business. Think about all those e-mails