Using cc in e-mail drives me crazy. It has caused quite a bit of mistrust of me and my communication. However, upon closer examination I noticed something. CC'ing people on e-mails is not and should not be my problem.
Requesting that someone cc people on e-mails is the equivalent to saying, "I'm too lazy to communicate with my people...so you should do it for me."
CC's cause all kinds of confusion especially when the e-mail is to someone outside of your organization:
1) Sometimes you cc someone and you shouldn't. How are you supposed to know that?
2) Sometimes you don't cc someone and you should. How are you supposed to know that?
3) Sometimes the conversation morphs and cc'd people should be dropped or added. How are you supposed to know that?
4) CC'ing people give's the impression that the e-mail is not as important for the cc'd people or they would have been in the To field. Then they don't make a mental note of the communication.
5) CC is used as a weapon by toxic (i.e. lazy) people, "What do you mean you didn't get it, I cc'd you? Now I can't trust you."
6) Important information gets stuffed at the bottom of important e-mails and cc'd parties are expected to root it out and remember it.
7) CC fills up people's inboxes. Enough said.
8) Everybody has different, sometimes competing views of e-mail etiquette. CC etiquette for one person violates etiquette for someone else.
9) Remembering who to CC for all the organizations your business deals with is simply impossible. There are too many scenarios and nuances and preferences to keep straight. This guarantees miscommunications, accidental communications, and overtly political situations.
10) It allows supervisors to spy on and micromanage subordinates, which creates distrust. This spills through to customers. "Why am I cc'd the boss on everything? Is my contact incompetent?"
11) If I cc 3 people plus the "To" person, that team has now spent 4x the time reading that e-mail even if it was erroneously send to 2 of the people. If time is money, then cc is a massive waste. What if your entire company cut the time reading e-mails by 50% like in my example above?
The more I write and think about it the more I believe that CC is bad for business and relationships. If I e-mail a business contact with a question or important information, I expect them to deal with it internally and get back to me. If cc'ing is so important to their team, then they can set up a filter to forward e-mails from me automatically, or have daily meetings to enhance communication. That eliminates a lot of friction, tension, erroneous e-mails, politics (why didn't you cc me?) etc...
The best solution, let each person manage their communication to their team instead of requesting outsiders do it for them. Under this scenario only the most important information makes it to the right people and time is not wasted over communicating to the wrong people.
I'm done with cc.
3.25.2015
Inside the Ant Farm: Recruiting in the Wild West
Warning, this is a bit of a rant, but there are some lessons in there at the end.
So, I just had my first adventure in recruiting my first employee. I am looking at hiring someone for a canvassing position to help me drum up business. I posted an ad on Craigslist and received a resume at 4:30pm. Being close to dinner time I decided to call the person in the morning.
The next morning before I could call back the prospective candidate called me. After a short time on the phone I found out the following:
1) The address on his resume was 3 years old
2) He lived in a different state than me and wanted me to pay for commuting
3) He did not want to do canvassing, but instead suggested working a cart in a mall
4) He wanted $100 per lead which is the equivalent to $2500 per week just for leads! (I was offering $10 per lead and $160 per job sold. That works out to $1250 per week for 15-20 hours of work.)
Can you say red flags?
Anyway, being somewhat new to this I decided to meet him anyway and told him to e-mail me so I could send him the address for a coffee shop where we could meet. He sent me an e-mail at midnight that night.
The next morning at 10am I get a text saying "I never received an e-mail. I can't do business like this sir."
I thought, that's a little forward considering I only had 10 hours to respond, during which 7 were definitely while most of America was sleeping.
Based on that text I replied that I thought it would not work out and wished him luck in his search.
Then he went ballistic on me calling my ad a garbage ad and saying I was crazy and that he wouldn't work for free. All I can say is wow! Not the type of person I want on my team. Now that I've written this it all seems too obvious.
So, lessons from recruiting:
1) Some people are crazy
2) If a candidate calls immediately after submitting a resume then be on guard. Why are they being so incredibly impatient. If they are worth their salt then waiting 1 business day for a phone call shouldn't be a big deal. (I return all phone calls the same or next business day)
3) If a candidate won't take the time to update their resume (their first impression) then they probably won't give a good second, third, fourth impression either.
4) If someone says $5000 per month for a 20 hour per week job is "working for free" then that person is probably a whiny loser. Stay away!
I think it's interesting that there are people out there who demand so much of others. How do these people hold a job and make ends meet? I suspect that this fellow may be hurting big time and that by rejecting me he can avoid being rejected himself. He obviously didn't take to kindly to me not hiring him.
Okay, it's time to let this one go.
So, I just had my first adventure in recruiting my first employee. I am looking at hiring someone for a canvassing position to help me drum up business. I posted an ad on Craigslist and received a resume at 4:30pm. Being close to dinner time I decided to call the person in the morning.
The next morning before I could call back the prospective candidate called me. After a short time on the phone I found out the following:
1) The address on his resume was 3 years old
2) He lived in a different state than me and wanted me to pay for commuting
3) He did not want to do canvassing, but instead suggested working a cart in a mall
4) He wanted $100 per lead which is the equivalent to $2500 per week just for leads! (I was offering $10 per lead and $160 per job sold. That works out to $1250 per week for 15-20 hours of work.)
Can you say red flags?
Anyway, being somewhat new to this I decided to meet him anyway and told him to e-mail me so I could send him the address for a coffee shop where we could meet. He sent me an e-mail at midnight that night.
The next morning at 10am I get a text saying "I never received an e-mail. I can't do business like this sir."
I thought, that's a little forward considering I only had 10 hours to respond, during which 7 were definitely while most of America was sleeping.
Based on that text I replied that I thought it would not work out and wished him luck in his search.
Then he went ballistic on me calling my ad a garbage ad and saying I was crazy and that he wouldn't work for free. All I can say is wow! Not the type of person I want on my team. Now that I've written this it all seems too obvious.
So, lessons from recruiting:
1) Some people are crazy
2) If a candidate calls immediately after submitting a resume then be on guard. Why are they being so incredibly impatient. If they are worth their salt then waiting 1 business day for a phone call shouldn't be a big deal. (I return all phone calls the same or next business day)
3) If a candidate won't take the time to update their resume (their first impression) then they probably won't give a good second, third, fourth impression either.
4) If someone says $5000 per month for a 20 hour per week job is "working for free" then that person is probably a whiny loser. Stay away!
I think it's interesting that there are people out there who demand so much of others. How do these people hold a job and make ends meet? I suspect that this fellow may be hurting big time and that by rejecting me he can avoid being rejected himself. He obviously didn't take to kindly to me not hiring him.
Okay, it's time to let this one go.
3.13.2015
Inside the Ant Farm: Postcards Failed
So the first 2000 postcards landed on Monday. I got one call and that guy didn't leave a voicemail. I called him back with no results.
That's a 0.05% response rate. :(
I'm trying to decide if it is worth paying to send out the remaining 4000 postcards. Is it better to put the money into something else or should I stick to the plan of 3 waves of 2000 postcards to the same audience?
I'm going to sleep on it.
That's a 0.05% response rate. :(
I'm trying to decide if it is worth paying to send out the remaining 4000 postcards. Is it better to put the money into something else or should I stick to the plan of 3 waves of 2000 postcards to the same audience?
I'm going to sleep on it.
3.05.2015
Inside the Ant Farm: Waiting for Postcards
Yesterday my first wave of postcards went out. I am now in limbo until they land.
I continue to test my phone system to make sure it works and am constantly reading internet case studies on response rates. There is basically no good data out there about response rates. Probably because they can vary so much. I'm hoping for a 0.25% response rate or better over the whole campaign. That means I am looking forward to getting 5 phone calls next week.
Fingers crossed!
I continue to test my phone system to make sure it works and am constantly reading internet case studies on response rates. There is basically no good data out there about response rates. Probably because they can vary so much. I'm hoping for a 0.25% response rate or better over the whole campaign. That means I am looking forward to getting 5 phone calls next week.
Fingers crossed!
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