Reply All is the dumbest button ever.
I can't tell you how much junk ends up in my inbox that should be a private conversation or frankly that I just don't care about. I'll bet if Microsoft removed the Reply All function from Outlook, U.S. productivity would climb by 15%, GDP would pop by a trillion dollars, and there would be 84% fewer aneurysms at work.
I believe there should be a qualification test you have to pass before Reply All functionality even works on your machine. It's bad enough when people misuse the button because they're clueless. It's even worse when they misuse it to be passive aggressive or to play political games.
Yes, this is a bit of a rant post (like you expect less?) but it's also a cautionary tale of how technology can be your friend and your enemy. You might think your laptop is cute and cuddly like WALL-E only to find out it rises up to destroy you like the terminator. Heed this advice now or pay the price later...
This one time, at band camp... oh. Sorry. Wrong blog. Lemme try again.
This one time, there was a team I was on. They did incredible work. They had found the balance between analytical rigor and rapid decision making. When they got busy, stuff happened.
At one point our team was making a meaty recommendation. The implications of the decision were pretty large so we made sure we involved the relevant stakeholders in the decision making process. Unfortunately many of those decision makers were either at remote locations or their schedules precluded us from getting in front of them face to face. Email became the channel we had to use to involve them.
The team sent out the presentation to those stakeholders. One guy in particular loved playing the "I'm smarter than you are" game and he usually did so by pointing out errors others had made. He'd do so in front of as large an audience as possible. When he received the presentation (which was also sent to about 20 other senior level execs on the same email) he decided it was time to play "gotcha!"
He thought he found an error in the team's work. He deliberately hit reply all. We knew it was deliberate because his greeting on the email was "Hello everyone. I'm including all of you on this message because I think we need to all understand a problem I've found." He decried the team's "lack of rigor" and said he kind of expected it because he had "seen them do sloppy analysis before" (yes, he was a jackass). He demanded the decision not be made until the team "got it right." Everything came to a grinding halt. The team was shocked.
We looked into this "error." We were pleasantly surprised to find he had misread one of the pages and transposed some of the numbers. His conclusions were dead wrong. I informed him of this via a direct email addressed only to him. I explained where he had misread the numbers and clarified the conclusion was still valid.
He replied directly to me. "I'm sorry. You're right. I misread the numbers. I'm cool with the decision." It struck me as odd he had suddenly forgotten how fantastic the Reply All button was. I saw it as my civic duty to remind him.
I wrote: "Thanks for supporting the decision. I need you to send that same message you sent to me about how you were wrong and the team was right to all those folks on your first Reply All message. All those stakeholders are holding off on the decision and they still think the team does sloppy work. I need you to correct both of those points."
His reply: "Well you can just update them and tell them I'm okay with the analysis." He was backing out of doing the right thing.
I replied: "Either you can send the Reply All retraction and correction or I can write my own along with my own color commentary on the entire situation. I believe you'd definitely prefer the former to the latter in this case."
His reply all retraction went out in about 2 minutes flat. In all the time the team worked with him after that, we never saw another reply all. If he had concerns with something, he came to the team directly to have them addressed. Behavior change is a wonderful thing.
A few parting points of guidance on using Reply All:
1. Make sure you know the difference between the Reply and Reply All buttons and what they do. I know it sounds silly but you'd be surprised how many folks don't appreciate the difference.
2. Be deliberate when using Reply All. Look at it through the lens of "Care All" (as in does EVERYONE on that list REALLY care about your reply?). If not everyone will care, remove those who won't and target your message.
3. Don't play reindeer political passive aggressive games with the reply all button. I guarantee that strategy will backfire on you at some point. Be a grown up and go express your concerns directly. Everyone involved will appreciate it if you do.
4. Never escalate a Reply All passive aggressive war. See point 3 above.
5. One exception to this guidance is you should OCCASIONALLY use Reply All when you want to praise someone on the team for doing great work such that all recipients know about said great work. Praise in public. It makes the workplace a brighter place.
So who has a funny reply all story to share? Let's hear it in the comments below.
- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
Monday, September 6, 2010
Email Stupidity: Reply All Cuts Both Ways
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6 comments:
OK Mike, now that you've opened the E-mail Ineffectiveness Can 0' Worms. . .
A corollary problem, I call having a case of "The Others", is when multiple people are named in the "To" field, but there's no direction in the body of the email who specifically is responsible for any action or reply. So, if Mike, Jan, Allison and Tim are all thinking one of "the others" will do something, it's a pretty sure bet nobody is doing anything.
My favorites are the ones that use the Reply All button to tell the original user of the Reply All button to not use the Reply All button!
A few months back, an intern was trying to help getting the cost of an office product for a project. On doing so he created a string of e-mails that somehow were linked to a list of internal buyers. Well, everytime someone form that list was telling the intern that they received the e-mail by mistake, guess what...they were hitting the "Reply All" key. To this day, you still receive some of those...it's a legend!
My favorite is when someone decides to use the "Reply All" function but also adds someone to the convesation. I am on a condo board and a resident took a conversation string a forwarded it to someone, thinking that it was a way to get more help. Instead he threw several people under the bus and created a bigger problem. The best is that he had no idea that waht he had done was wrong. I think that some people need more than the "reply all" button taken away!
If you find yourself prone to abusing Reply All, keep in mind that many email clients allow you to edit the toolbar and add/remove buttons from it. Removing the Reply All button so that you are forced to go through multiple layers of menus in order to use it (instead of it just being right there, next to Reply) ought to break the habit quickly enough.
Hi, I read your post regarding the issue of using 'Reply All' and I must say, that I agree with your opinions. I have experienced the same thing in my institution and when I reminded those individuals that such emails should be sent through the proper procedures, the backlash that I received was crazy! It was as if I was wrong to tell them. Now, I making the midst of proving them wrong! Thanks a million!
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