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Failure to Communicate

"I emailed you. Therefore the ball is in your court and I did my job." 

As I've started to work within the innards of a large IT organization, it's occurred to me that I'm in the place that cultivates passive aggressiveness. From the support person that would rather IM, text, or email you before calling you to the developer that will just nod his / her head in agreement to avoid a disagreement or not go through the pain of an explanation- I am not just knee deep in passive aggressiveness, I'm drowning in it.
You can imagine the challenges facing an IT project manager. Actually you can imagine the challenges facing the business side of an organization as a specific function tries to actually communicate with the IT side of the house.
As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that no matter how intelligent, witty, or articulate I think an email is- it's not the same as getting in front of a person and working through a particular problem or issue. The problem with technology today is that it's made avoiding debate and healthy confrontation way too easy. Way too easy. 
I'm not going to lie. I hate confrontation just as much as the next person. But now I just get peeved when nobody responds to my email. The ease of having an email war is again, too easy. 
That said, here are my new rules for email:
  1. If you have over 1,000 unread emails, guess what? Only 15 actually require you to do something. Think about doing something with the ones that are just 'informing' you.
  2. If an email goes back and forth more than twice, schedule a meeting or pick up the phone
  3. If you take more than 1 minute to craft an email, go see the person or call a meeting. 
  4. If the person doesn't respond to you in 24 or 48 hours and it's important - call the person and go see them
I realize that this requires a degree of assertiveness that even I don't have. I also know that this requires for you to, guess what, actually talk to a person (!) But at some point, people not responding or avoiding or blasting you with high school drama-like emails can get old. So take a day or two, get your email to zero and try talking to someone.

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