[jaffa2]

in his email he says :

Please reply by 3 pm today so we can confirm with the client.

in my experience when an action relies on somebody 'coming back' ESPECIALLY if it's a client. (do you want this, or that?)

It's best to tell them what you are going to do, unless they confirm otherwise.

e.g. We will proceed with removing feature Y to meet deadline of Mar 19, unless otherwise directed by 3pm today.

This avoids the limbo situtation where a team can't progress because they don't have clarity on X or Y.

Not always applicable but I find it works a lot of the time.

After sending emails to suppliers, they would often answer the first point in the text but ignore later points. This speaks to the send only 1 thing in an email, but if you have a few questions about something then put them in a numbered list.

I found response quality went way up when i did this, and often the responses were along the lines of :

1. do this 2. yes that's right 3. ok we note that

which i'm sure helps them becuaes the email is easier to read and parse in the first place and easier to write a reply to.

[sdevonoes]

Certainly I have never been in such a situation, but just for me to understand: if the sender has enough decision power to move forward with a default action without confirmation, then the email is simply a polite notice to someone above in the command chain, isn’t it?

Why the email then? Wouldn’t a record of the decision (not via email , but in some confluence-like space) be enough? If the confirmation is really needed then a default action wouldn’t be possible, ofc

[BeetleB]

> if the sender has enough decision power to move forward with a default action without confirmation, then the email is simply a polite notice to someone above in the command chain, isn’t it?

In one team I did this all the time even though I didn't have the decision power. I did it to force people to respond.

Prior to my adopting this strategy, I'd send an email saying "We need a decision about this by X", and the most common response was ... sorry, there wasn't any! The majority of times people didn't respond, and I was stuck.

So I had to switch to "This is needed by X. I'm going to go ahead with Y, but let me know if you have other ideas."

And I would ensure that Y was a poor solution. I would get really rapid responses saying "Don't do Y! Do Z!"

Even though I've moved to other teams, I often use this technique (except if the team acts in good faith, my solution Y is actually my best attempt at solving it).

[vulcan01]

> And I would ensure that Y was a poor solution.

How do you ensure people don't think you're not good at your job, if you continually propose poor solutions? Since you're emailing other teams here, they probably(?) don't get to work with you day-to-day to realize you're doing this on purpose.

Also, what's the point of Y being a poor solution? Even if the other team isn't very responsive, can't you always propose your

> best attempt at solving it

such that even if they don't respond, you can implement a decent solution?

[BeetleB]

> How do you ensure people don't think you're not good at your job

Great point. In the beginning, it was fine because I was new and didn't have domain knowledge. As time went by, I had decided I hate the team/job and I need to find a new job anyway.

> Also, what's the point of Y being a poor solution?

In this scenario, I was never in a point of knowing if my good solution was good enough. My best attempt may be something that would get me 80-90% of the way but needed small modifications.

People speed reading my email might not see the nuance and think I already had the correct approach, and wouldn't respond. That risks going forth with a problematic solution. If, however, you say something that is clearly wrong, people are quick to respond.

More concisely, if I go with my best approach, and no one responds, I still don't know if my approach is correct or not. The point of the email is I need their feedback. So I have to set up the situation to virtually guarantee I get their feedback.

(Another approach I would do is list 3 options I was thinking of, and make the default one a poor one - at least this way they know I'm capable of thinking up good solutions but haven't developed judgement yet).

> such that even if they don't respond, you can implement a decent solution?

The goal is to elicit a response. If I say clearly "I need a response", then I'm not going to get it.

Again, do this only with problematic teams. This isn't a guide for normal work. For normally functioning teams, I would recommend going with the best approach and making that the clear default.

[1718627440]

This is called blackmail. It might fit the work culture in your company, but it certainly ain't polite.

[BeetleB]

Consistently not replying when you say "I need this information by X" is also impolite.

Crappy teams lead to crappy strategies.

Incidentally, people are reading too much into this. No one got upset at me for doing this. They knew I was trying to solve a problem. And they knew the bottleneck was themselves.

[zhengyi13]

You've probably got a certain level of trust or delegated authority, but you want input and you're giving your leadership the opportunity to steer the decision if they feel they need to, and you're balancing that against the urgency of action.

By very direct analogy, I think there's a dictum in the US military to the effect that a bad plan executed quickly can be better than a perfect plan that's executed too late.

ETA: ... and you're potentially speeding the decision/action by giving leadership the opportunity to confirm/redirect on receipt of the email.

[jaffa2]

Heres an somewhat contrived example scenario.

I’m going to McDonalds what do you want— a big mac meal sure no problem.

Get there. Oh wait what did he want for a drink? Coke? Coffee? Water?

Send a text what you want to drink?

No answer — what do you do?

Instead text should be saying ‘getting u a coke unless you let me know’

No answer in time, so you just get a coke for your friend and if he doesn’t like it tough.

So in that sense i guess yes its a polite notice. But it points to failures in the process .

You should have known what he wanted to drink before going.

You have or now create a policy that states in cases of unknown drink or default is coke.

If your guys ‘don’t’ know whether they can drop feature X or ship late they have been failed by the level above that should state shipping is priority. Therefore dropping a feature is the only action that they can take.

But in take the other point that you do need some authority . Without it progress will stall, and this becomes management issue again. They didn’t ensure you had the info or resource to do the thing.

Edit to add after thinking about it a bit more, that when dealing with customers a slow customer can stall your whole op if you make waiting on a decision from them. Just tell then what you are doing and it lets you proceed. If they come back later with opposite decision then you just do that as well,typically.

Outputting files to a customer :

Do you want them named like this or like that?

No— tell them how you are naming them and if they dont like it theybwil let you know.

Its about removing decisions from customer as most of the time they dont even know what they want

[1718627440]

> Instead text should be saying ‘getting u a coke unless you let me know’

In that case you can't distinguish wanting a coke from not having read or received the message at all. If you want synchronous communication, maybe you should use a synchronous communication channel.