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A couple of thoughts on some forgotten fundamentals
Posted by Chris Knudsen on July 29th, 2007
Last week was tough. It involved a lot of follow up, email, voicemail, etc. I was more than glad to hit Friday. A lot my frustrations stem from me feeling some of the basic fundamentals of business courtesy and communication have been forgotten. Here are some of my thoughts:
- Try to return email within 24 hours. Disregard this suggestion if you are spammed, cc’ed, bcc’ed or if the email does not require a reply.
- Return phone calls as soon as possible. Period.
- Always make sure you reply to a meeting invite so the person setting up the meeting knows you’re in.
- If you ask someone to meet with you always accommodate their schedule. After all you are the one requesting the meeting.
- If you ask someone to a lunch meeting (this especially applies in sales) pay for the lunch.
- If someone’s IM client indicates that they are busy don’t bug them unless its an emergency.
- If you tell someone you want to meet with them then meet with them. Don’t put them off.
- If you’re going to be more than a few minutes late to a meeting call ahead and let your appointment know you are running late. Always arrive at least five minutes early to each appointment. Being late and not notifying your appointment that you’re running late tells that person that you think your time is more important than there’s. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest problems I have encountered in Utah. People in Utah are too lax about common courtesies related to other people’s time.
- Always send a follow up thank you email after a meeting.
- If a person tells you they only have “x” time for a meeting make sure you don’t run over without asking them if its OK to run over. Its common to have meetings runs over (especially if you’re good at sales) but make sure you are still mindful of the other person’s schedule.
- When in a meeting TURN OFF YOUR PHONE. Make sure you give the other person your undivided attention. Also - and this is going to be a big one for some people -Â you don’t have to pick up every call you get. That’s why they invented voicemail (see second bullet point).
- Don’t turn your computer on in meetings unless you’re using it to take notes, add todo’s, etc. If you do need your computer on (and most people do) then make sure to stay off of chat, email and other distractions.Â
I must admit that I have violated most of the above suggestions at some point in my career. Heck, I violated one of the above suggestions just last week. So I’m not perfect. However, these are good guidelines to follow and I am going to make a strong effort to be better at following them myself.
What suggestions would you make along these lines?
I’d add one: crackberry addicts of the world just STOP. STOP I say! This is way worse that taking a call because with a call the other people in the meeting expect you to switch attention to the call. Pulling out your BlackBerry or SmartPhone or iPhone and banging away on email or SMS isn’t as disruptive, so people try to be all coy about it and do it non-conspicuously under the table and such. If it’s that important, leave the meeting. This one really, really bugs me.
Left by Jeremy on 07/30/2007