[abathur]

The most-deflating response to a thoughtfully-written email that lays out a clear set of strategic choices is the immediate TL;DR of the business world: can we schedule a quick call to make sure we're all on the same page about this? What's a good time for you?

[121789]

I think you shouldn't be too deflated about this. For many decisions, a sync session is necessary (whether it's a group review or a team call). The biggest benefit of a good writing culture is to turn five open-ended time-consuming group calls into a couple of well-written emails, and a final decision call with a clear agenda.

[abathur]

A decisive decision-session is great. An I-didn't-bother-reading-your-email-so-please-spend-an-extra-30m-explaining-it session is less so.

[ReactiveJelly]

I fantasize of just printing out my emails and reading them in a monotone

[dcatx]

So tiring to get those responses. My old company was forced to go remote when the pandemic hit and the anxiety that the founder had about remote resulted in meetings about meetings to prepare everyone for the meetings.

Everyone has different learning styles, some conversations are definitely better in real-time and in-person but the default behavior being refusing to read an email longer than 3 sentences is rough.

[notahacker]

The default behaviour being an assumption that anybody who has any questions, thinks a back and forth would be beneficial or possibly even wants to arrive at a decision democratically is a dullard who didn't even bother to absorb the perfectly clear, indisputable and comprehensive final word on the matter that is their original email is pretty rough too though.

I guess sometimes people who [rightly or wrongly] think a strategic decision isn't worth 30 minutes of their time find it easier to suggest the other person is the one who's not putting the effort into it...

[dcatx]

This feels like an odd assumption to make about my comment. I don't think all meetings are a waste of time and I certainly don't think people with different work preferences than me are dullards.

My experience has been heavy on people who skip reading in favor of a meeting even when the reading is to provide historical context, summarize learnings, and present what we know about a situation. Not reading turns what should have been a productive, forward looking discussion into a meeting rehashing old information for the folks who didn't do their homework.

In my professional life, I've encountered far more people who prefer to have meetings that could have been emails than I have people who think a strategic decision isn't worth 30 minutes of time for a discussion but perhaps my use of "default behavior" was a bit strong.

I suspect the meeting-heavy cultures and aversion to reading I've encountered are largely driven by discomfort with writing, not reading which is where articles like this one could add some value.

[notahacker]

> This feels like an odd assumption to make about my comment.

I mean, "refuse to read more than 3 sentences" (or "the TLDR of the business world" and "I-didn't-bother-reading-your-email-so-please-spend-an-extra-30m-explaining-it session is less so" in others' comments in the same subthread) seems like unrealistic as well as incredibly uncharitable assumptions to make about people's general motivations for requesting followup calls. Especially if the subject matter of the original email was something as non-trivial as "a clear set of strategic choices"

Indeed, if it ends up actually taking 30 minutes to explain an email, it's obvious both that the other person is putting far more time and effort into the call than they would have done into scanning the email text, and that the email itself couldn't possibly have communicated all the information the caller [felt that they] needed to know in sufficient detail.

Which doesn't guarantee that the "quick call" was actually a productive use of time, or that the caller's questions are particularly good ones or that the caller couldn't have included followup questions in their reply, but if somebody can't think of any reason why colleagues receiving their email would call for clarification other than lack of interest in reading, there's a decent chance it's not [just] the colleagues with the communication problems. Even if the colleagues don't have additional information to add and seem fixated on something which point 11b was supposed to rule out.

Sure, as the number of people in a group meeting grows the probability someone hasn't read (or has read and has completely forgotten) the meeting prep notes approaches 1, but that's a separate issue from people receiving an email and calling for one-to-one clarification.

[abathur]

Have you entertained the possibility that we can tell, in said call, that the person who immediately requested the call needs the email explained to them (or asks multiple questions recapitulating the basics of the email) before they can contribute?

I'm not complaining about people asking questions to clarify or build on their understanding of the email. (Or even a lack of understanding; it's hard to build enough shared context to communicate well.)

You're the one here uncharitably projecting the assumption that we're punishing people for asking reasonable questions about something they made an effort to read.

[notahacker]

I don't think it's uncharitable to assume that when someone writes that a generic type of request for synchronous communication is the "TLDR of the business world" which is "deflating" to receive after laying out a "clear set of strategic choices" in writing, their objection is to what they said they objected to (receiving an email asking for a call to discuss strategic choices after writing an email they believe to fully cover them), not the ignorant nature of specific questions not asked in that email.

But hey, maybe the brief text summary you wrote didn't encapsulate every nuance of your thoughts on the issue and any particularly bad habits specific colleagues of yours may have. I guess you don't want a call to clarify it ;-)