Tips for effective emailing

Email wastes too much of our time. It's not just because of the volume of email. Poorly worded or unnecessary emails distract us and cost us time. According to a recent article on MSNBC.com, workers who are interrupted by emails or phone calls can't just get right back on track. It can take 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption to do so. (For more, see “‘Reply All' can lower worker productivity.” )

And yet, we need email to get things done more quickly. Here are some tips for helping your own productivity and getting the right kind of attention for your emails:

To help yourself:

• Understand that people read emails for quick communications.  Want your reader to spend time on a subject?  Write a separate memo or schedule a meeting.  We prepare ourselves for different types of documents.  We might be willing to spend hours on a thick book or report that we think of as 'serious reading' -- but only seconds on the same platform we use to read and share jokes and images.
  
• Schedule yourself times to respond to email, and avoid checking email outside of those times.
• If you have to check email throughout the day, open those that are from people you need to respond to quickly (such as your supervisor), or those dealing with critical projects.
• If you're part of a team project, and you see a lot of ‘reply all' emails from various team members, consider asking for a conference call or meeting. The extended conversations may be a sign of tension that is best resolved in person or by phone.
• Organize your emails, so that you can easily respond to high priority items first.  I use a system developed by David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done.  But you may find a different system works better for you.  
  

 To help others:

• Understand that everything you ask someone to read is more work for them. Would you want them giving you more work, if it doesn't benefit you?
  
• Never, ever send an email without a subject line. It is like asking a busy person for a meeting without any reason.
• Let your reader know in the subject line if something is URGENT, you want the reader to PLEASE REPLY, or the email is just FYI.
• Use strong verbs and precise nouns in your subject. “URGENT: Please help Joe on the budget” is stronger than “Re: Help”
• Keep your emails to one topic. If you can't, use subheadings (such as I do with PDI News), to let your readers know that the email has several parts. We have become used to using email for quick communication, and to seeing obligatory language (e.g., “This communication is intended for the recipient only…”). So when there are breaks for paragraphs, many people drop their attention.
• If you're going to change the topic in an ongoing conversation, do not simply hit “reply.” Put a new subject line, or compose a new email. Otherwise, your readers may think you're just continuing an old discussion. If they're ready to move on, your email may go nowhere. 

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

 

lf you have a professional development tip you'd like to share, please send your tip to Leo Vazquez at vazquezl@rci.rutgers.edu.  Please also give us your full name, title and affiliation, so we can give you proper credit.

Should you go after that RFP?

Whether we are consultants or nonprofit or public sector professionals, we all at some point wind up getting requests for proposals (RFPs). Hopefully, we get more of them than we can respond to. How should we choose among them?

The first step is to decide whether the work that is being asked for is in what the requesters would see as one of your core strengths. That is, it's not about whether you can do the work, but whether the person who reads your proposal thinks you can do the work. If not, you will be better off ditching the RFP or seeing if you can collaborate with another organization that specializes in the work.

Think about how you heard about the RFP. If someone at the requesting organization told you about it before it was issued, that's a good sign that you might be a strong candidate. If, on the other hand, you found out about it from someone outside the agency, and had to request a copy of the RFP, you are going to have a harder time proving yourself against your competitors. If the agency didn't send your group an RFP for something that you would normally do, the most likely reasons are that the issuers don't know you, or don't want you to respond. (Or it might be that the intern assigned to mail out the RFPs overlooked your address.)

Before you begin to write your proposal, get information from the issuer. Some of the things you want to know are:

*Does the requester have the money committed to the project? As strange as it sounds, some public agencies send out RFPs without having the money to pay for the work. What someone at the agency is probably doing is getting respondents to do the work of building a case to pay for the project. They may get the money, but that doesn't mean you will get the job. Note: this kind of practice is harmful to society in the long run. It increases the operating costs of responding organizations, which are then passed on to clients or employees.

*How much does the requester plan to spend? Any response other than a range of figures is a bad sign. "I don't know" means the agency might just be fishing for ideas -- which the agency might take on itself. "We can't tell you that" (or words to that effect) is a sign that the potential client might have a habit of hiding information. Clients that withhold important information will generate additional administrative and time costs -- and may blame you for the overruns.

*Why is the requester sending out the RFP? Clients and funding agencies aren't always clear in an RFP about what they want in a consultant or grantee. By asking questions such as: "Why do you want to do this?" "Why now?" and "What have you tried before?" you can get a richer sense of the requester's needs and beliefs.

There may be times when you should respond to an RFP, even if you sense some warning signs, or think you will be a long shot. Respond to the RFP if:

*You're trying to build a relationship with the requesting agency. You can use your proposal as a 'calling card' that might help you get future interviews on other projects.

*You're trying to build your image with competitors or potential clients. Requesters are more likely to pick the consultant or grantee that they know -- or at least have heard of.

*You don't mind taking a risk. Like the slogan for the New York Lottery -- Hey, you never know.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

For more information:
The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers several courses to help you enhance your practice and business.  They include Business Development for Planners, Professional Writing Studio, and Who Do They Think You Are? Branding for Planning, Design and Development Professionals. To learn more about these courses, go to http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/bocep

Making cost-effective choices for continuing education

Everybody knows that planning and policy professionals who build their knowledge, get more training, and develop their abilities are better prepared to handle new challenges in our field. There are many choices for continuing education – websites, professional networks, webinars, day-long workshops, conferences, online classes and programs that last days or months, as well as traditional university-based classes. The options are growing. Any of them could be exactly what you’re looking for – or a waste of your time and money. How do you get the most for your limited resources?

To do this, you need to treat continuing education as a process, rather than an event. But first, here are some common mistakes that professionals and organizations make about continuing education:

Mistake #1: Thinking all continuing education is “training.”
Generally, continuing education does any of three things: build your knowledge, train you to learn new skills, or develop your abilities. Knowledge is knowing about a subject. Conferences and webinars are good for building your knowledge. Training is designed to help you learn how to do something. Hearing someone’s success stories in a conference may help open your eyes to new ideas, but you usually don’t learn there how to put those ideas into practice. Workshops are designed to do this. Development is designed to help you change the way you think about and approach problems. It is the highest form of continuing education. You get knowledge and training, and under the best conditions, you can create new knowledge yourself. Ultimately, development programs are about more than what is being taught – they are about building your capacity to do things better.

Let’s say you want to learn “budgets and budgeting”. If you need to learn why a budget is important (knowledge), a one-hour webinar is fine. If you want to learn how to put together a strong budget (training), you may want a two- to four-hour workshop. But let’s say you want to use a budget as a tool for effective management or organizational change. That’s where a development program – especially one that gives you time to practice what you learned and reflect on it – is most useful.

If a subject is complex or difficult, you may be better off with development than simple training. Warren Bennis, who is to leadership what Frederick Law Olmsted is to landscape architecture, doesn’t put much faith in leadership “training” programs that last a few days. That’s because leadership is far too complex and difficult to learn in a few days. Leadership is not a set of skills, but ways of seeing, thinking and acting. You learn this best in programs that give you time to learn, explore and reflect. (That’s why The Leading Institute’s “Leading from the Middle” program is four to six months long. It’s leadership development, not just training.)

Mistake #2: “Paying for a conference.”
Directors and executives who are critical of continuing education see it as just a way of giving employees paid time off. Those who think in terms of “paying for a conference” are creating their own problems. Organizations should pay for knowledge, training or development. Directors and staff together should decide what new knowledge or skills they need – and then make the most cost-effective decisions. If you’re just “paying for a conference,” you shouldn’t expect your staff to learn. You should expect them to network, party and hang out -- at the organization’s expense.
“I don’t often find the content of conferences particularly useful. I read a lot. I think about these subjects constantly and talk to a lot of people. By the time I get to a conference, I know the substance of what’s going to be said.”
Keith Ferrazzi, in Never Eat Alone

Mistake #3: Keeping what you learned to yourself.
This is a common mistake of both learners and organizations. Planning and policy professionals take time off to go to a continuing education program, come back to work, and… do the same things they did before they left. Under these circumstances, directors are right to think they wasted their organization’s resources. But it hurts the learner too. An excellent way to learn about a subject is to explain it to others. Teaching forces you to think about your subject and put it into your own words, which helps you retain more knowledge.

Mistake #4: Thinking you have to leave the office to learn
Organizations waste a lot of money on training by ignoring a low-cost and valuable resource – the diverse knowledge of their employees. Most planning organizations do little or nothing to encourage employees to share their knowledge with one another. It’s not expensive – you can hold staff lunches where employees – and not just the professional staff – can share knowledge or train their co-workers. If your organization has multiple offices, you can encourage peers to share knowledge over online discussion boards. Yes, planning and policy professionals do share knowledge while working on projects. But the focus tends to be on production, not on learning.

Mistake #5: Not paying for or pursuing continuing education
Planning is such a dynamic field that planning and policy professionals who fail to learn will fall far behind their peers. Organizations that don’t pay for continuing education should expect their employees to be of lesser quality than their competitors – because their staff will be, eventually. Some directors mistakenly think that sending employees to training programs just helps them find another job quicker. But covering continuing education sends a signal that you care about your employees’ growth and development. If you do not want to pay to help your employees learn, you should expect them to be less motivated, less loyal, less productive, and less prepared. And your best staff will probably find someplace else to work. That place will probably offer continuing education costs.

Mistake #6: Trying to learn in “chunks”
I hear the same complaint from planning and policy professionals all the time. They go to a workshop or conference, get excited about all the new things they learned, then three months later, forget most of it. If this happened to you, it’s not your fault. According to the book Coaching for Performance, people on average forget about 90% of what they are told and about
70% of what they’re shown after three months. Why? Because they try to warehouse the knowledge like books on a shelf. But your brain acts more like a set of muscles in a gym than a library. Continue to exercise your brain, or you’ll lose most of what you learned. How to do this? Treat every experience as an opportunity to learn. Schedule time to reflect on what you know – or think you know. (I like to do this on Sunday mornings, before everyone in the house is awake.) Talk with others about what you’ve learned, or better yet, teach it to someone else.


Here are some steps to making smart choices about continuing education:

1. Work together with colleagues to decide what you most want or need to learn to achieve your mission and goals. There are so many things planning and policy professionals can learn about, you could theoretically spend all your time in continuing education. (But your organization won’t let you.) Talk with your colleagues, supervisors and staff to find out what “gaps” in knowledge or skills are hurting your ability to meet your mission.

2. Create a “knowledge inventory” in your office. Have members of your office identify their five areas of expertise – on any subject. Someone’s expertise in music management might not seem useful to planning today. But that’s a person you’ll want to turn to when you want to do an arts-based revitalization program.

3. Decide whether you need knowledge, training or development in a particular area.

4. See who in the group or organization would be willing to teach, train or develop their co-workers.

• If nobody wants to, see if your budget allows you to bring someone in. This will help more colleagues get the same experience.
• Or maybe you need to leave the office to learn. If it is the kind of place where the phone rings a lot, planning and policy professionals have to stop to check their e-mail, or there are frequent interruptions, it’s not a good environment for learning.

5. Create a staff development budget that provides real money for learning. If your budget is so tight that you can’t make funds available, budget staff time for colleagues to teach one another.

6. Seek out the most cost-effective solutions for learning. Ok, there’s a four-hour workshop at an upcoming conference. But is it worth spending $1,500 for four hours of training? Be careful. Cheap is not the same as cost-effective. If you’re unsure, get recommendations from people who’ve been to the program, or get good information from the program’s leadership. Some of the questions you may want to ask are:

• What should I expect to learn from this program?
• Will I be getting knowledge or also tools?
• What has been the experience of others who’ve gone through this program?
• What is the instructor’s experience or expertise in the subject?
• What do your course evaluations say?
• What materials will I receive before the program starts? (This will help you be better prepared for the program.)
• What did previous students consider to be the weakest areas of the program, and what improvements are you making? (The answers to this question tell you whether the program designers are adapting to new information or learning needs among students.)
• Is there a test to demonstrate your knowledge or can anybody earn a certificate or credits just for showing up? (If there is no test to demonstrate the knowledge of participants, there is no way to know whether the participant actually learned anything.)

7. Maximize your investment by planning for the “post-program.”

• If you are director or manager, make time for your staff to practice what they’ve learned, and encourage them to share their knowledge with their colleagues.

• If you were in the learning program, work with your supervisors to make time to share what you’ve learned. A free lunch will help you attract your co-workers.

Some people see continuing education as personal development. But I see it as a way to further our public service mission. If we can learn better ways to analyze challenges, and new tools to address them, we can be more effective, efficient and productive. Ultimately, the people who most benefit are our clients and constituents.

Leonardo Vazquez

To learn more about programs offered by the Professional Development Institute or The Leading Institute, please visit www.policy.rutgers.edu/pdi