It is so easy to hide behind email in Project Management.
Email is a great way of communicating clear requirements and keeping a documentation trail for your project team. It is especially handy for working in virtual teams.
Email can also be a noose!
I have heard project team members advise their deliverable is delayed because they never received an answer to their email request. Communication is a high percentage of project management so we need to step away from Outlook and call people (maybe even face-to-face if possible).
Many people manage their tasks via email as well. If your deliverable email is not in the top 20 of their inbox, the task gets buried. As project managers, we need to ensure we recognize the way our team members manage tasks so we can ensure we help them deliver on time. I call this “gentle nagging”.
Dan Markovitz recently wrote a great article about how the problem is the lack of a decent process for handling email, not a lack of time to handle it. Tim Ferriss wrote about implementing Zero E-mail Fridays.
Once we stop hiding behind email as a single tool, our communication can only improve!
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