that will pay big dividends and provide immediate
benefits, it would be in this area of learning the
latest ‘best practice’ email management strategies
and skills. Because email is used all day, every
day, any training will give significant, immediate
and sustainable benefits.
As Forbes magazine has said, “Email is the
leading cause of preventable productivity loss in
organisations today”.
How can this issue be addressed?
I suggest there are three approaches:
Executives can upskill to manage email better,
quicker and more effectively for themselves
w The management of email can be outsourced to
an internal EA
w The management of email can be outsourced to
a specialist external EA
w
Whichever option is chosen, it will involve an
investment of time, energy, effort, and focus in
the short term. But this investment quickly pays
off and frees up enormous amounts of time, and
‘headspace’ for higher priority projects and use of
the executive’s cognitive and leadership skills.
In fact, latest research from the University of
Michigan shows that when leaders get caught up
‘doing email’ and use high value time doing low
value activity, they take time, focus and energy
away from leadership activities. When these
leadership behaviours decline, it has been shown
that staff task performance, work satisfaction,
organisational commitment, intrinsic motivation
and engagement all decrease.
How can an EA have an impact in this area of
daily workload management?
EAs want to be able to help and most executives
would actually welcome their EA taking the
initiative in this area. This will obviously take an
investment of time and effort to discuss and set up
agreed procedures, protocols and processes but
I believe you’ll find the amount of time needed
is surprisingly small if it’s done correctly and
with full commitment. Plus, it can only lead to
a deeper level of understanding and trust in this
key workplace relationship.
In the Executive-EA partnership, the aim of the
EA is to ‘make life easier’ for their executive and the
executive’s aim is to ‘make life better’ for their EA.
Of course, there may be some objections from
your executive to making this change. The first
of these is probably the fear of missing out—of
not being across everything that’s going on. But
that’s the point! There’s too much information,
communication and data for any executive to be
across it all. While it’s understandable that an
executive wants to be accessible to their team,
it simply costs too much to do so and seriously
dilutes time, energy and focus from the higher
priorities of the role. The enemy of the best is
not the worst, but the second best. Every YES to
a low value email is a NO to high value thinking
and activity.
Another objection might be about
confidentiality. Sure, there will be confidential
issues that require careful handling. But this will
only apply to a small number of emails (maybe
2-5 percent) and there are specific strategies that
can be employed to manage these.
A third issue is that of trust. There is a great
degree of trust needed between an executive and
their EA. Of course, trust takes time to build up,
and is easily broken, but it is well worth the effort
when viewed from the bigger picture perspective.
As Stephen Covey Junior has written in his book,
The Speed of Trust, “Where there is high trust in
a relationship, a team or in the marketplace, the
cost of doing business goes down and speed of
transaction goes up. But when trust is low, the cost
of doing business goes up and speed goes down”.
How much can an executive benefit from
addressing this issue?
The first step might be to measure the current
impact of email overload and areas of challenge
and frustration in keeping up with email volumes
and demands.
An executive team of eight that I worked
with recently found that they were spending
an average of $130,000 worth of their time
doing email. That’s $130,000 per person, per
year! That’s over $1 million of executive time
being spent on what is largely an administrative
function.
When you consider that savings of 25 to 40
percent of this cost can be made by enhancing
and better harnessing the skills and efforts of
an EA, shouldn’t it be a high priority for any
executive who wants to reduce their overload?
THE EXPERT
Steuart Snooks is an
e-mail and workplace
productivity expert
who works with busy
professionals to help
them get control
of all their e-mails.
He has developed a
series of workshops,
presentations, webinars,
coaching and resources
that outline the best
practice skills for
mastering your e-mail.
Summary
The role of an EA is to protect their executive not
only from others, but also from the executive
themselves. Maintaining absolute control of the
executive’s email is the key to a truly effective
partnership.
While the initiative for this will usually have
to come from the EA, I think you’d find that most
executives will be willing to relinquish control of
email to their EA. If the EA is to play the proactive
role that successful executive-EA partnerships
utilise, making a change and upskilling in this
area is essential. S
www.steuartsnooks.com.au
Issue 2 2019 | Chief of Staff 53