7 Tips to make recipients open your email

1. Do a message recall
   When this is done, the recipients’ interest is aroused, and they then read the entire email seeking the ‘error’ due which the sender ‘tried’ to recall the message.
   
2. Address a person, but mark everyone
   That way atleast one person reads, then mid-way mention the rest with (@ XYZ, @All, etc.).
   
3. Follow the mass mail
   Apparently, nobody reads mails from Communications. So, while they hit delete (without reading) the ‘mass mail’, the email immediately following opens by default.
   
4. Use courier font
   The recipient senses that the mail was sent from a Smart Phone with office mail and it only means that the matter is urgent.
   
5. Key event reference
   Make a reference, however remote, to a large event, past or future. That way everyone believes he or she is contributing to a larger cause.
   
6. CC carefully
   Don’t mark the recipient’s boss in the first mail but only in the subsequent follow-up status-request mail. If the first mail doesn’t do trick, the second surely will.
   
7. Reply all
   Reply all is done more often by mistake, at the spur of the moment, than as a calculated move. Bystanders will watch the fun unfold, and read every mail in the thread thereafter. Reply all means you also get a copy of the email, a sure way of confirming that the mail has exited your sent items. 

Cubicles: how to safeguard them

Dedicated to the piece of real estate made famous by Dogbert, Catbert, Dilbert, ...

It is important to demand a cubicle if you are eligible. Else, you may never get it.

It is important that the desk in the cubicle faces the entrance. You get to judge the mood of the entrant, assess the situation and defuse it before the cubicle explodes. Also, you don't want to use a rear-view mirror if you have to work on your document while keeping an eye on the visitor.

It is important to use privacy screen. It will eliminate shoulder surfing. It will also create the impression that you do work on confidential documents.

It is important to have more than one document open, whether on your PC/laptop or on your desk. It gives the impression that multi-tasking is second nature to you.

It is important to face the aisle if the cubicle is abutting the aisle. This ensures that passersby wish you with a smile to your face and not to your back.

It is important to keep at least two packets of unopened cookies or biscuits in the top drawer. There is no limit to hunger at the workplace.

It is important to occasionally step out of the cubicle and walk up to the coffee vending machine. It is possible that you can then wake up and smell the coffee.

It is important to have a main entrance and a side exit to the cubicle. You will need it to get away and get work done faster.

It is important to be careful while discussing your cubicle size. Size does matter.

It is important to adorn the walls of the cubicle with your achievements, certificates, family portraits, motivational quotes and an appreciation letter from the boss. It's proof that you deserve the cubicle.

PS: what is your cubicle experience?

15 Reasons Meetings Fail

Meetings – rendezvous, dates, trysts – are important to keep the cycle of corporate and personal lives moving.

1. The unknown voice: you receive a call from an unknown number and a faintly recognizable voice seeking a meeting. No names offered, no names asked.
2. The unknown schedule: you invite people over for a meeting that everyone believes is important, then you realize it clashes with another one scheduled by your boss, and you hurry to cancel it.
3. The urgent matter elsewhere: the people you invited wait for you while you have an urgent matter to attend to elsewhere.
4. Block Your Date: wrong date, wrong time, wrong place, wrong agenda … no meeting.
5. No room for social media: there is only so much room in a meeting for people in the physical world; the moment you log in to FB, they log off.
6. Raver versus raconteur: you don’t get nowhere by yelling, ranting or raving when you are dealing with perfectly sane, knowledgeable professionals.
7. The stretch: a two-minute catch-up turns into a 50-minute farce.
8. Netmeeting: you log in and then pick up the newspaper.
9. Under-prepared: you are invited for a quick update but in reality you are expected to present how, when, where, who, what, why and why not.
10. Bark up the wrong tree: you are invited to a meeting to discuss something critical only to realize that it was about the latest health fad.
11. Latecomers, unwelcome: nobody likes latecomers, and like in Cricket, you are banished for a length of time thrice the number of minutes you were late (nominal late fee system has not been found to work!).
12. First impression: you made a very poor first impression by plucking the piece of broccoli out the gap in your front teeth.
13. Interject: you are explaining the workings of a complex formula that you cracked only to find someone else finishing off your sentences.
14. No humor: you cracked a joke that nobody liked.
15. No respite: you travel two hours to meet someone you like to listen to and she does not tell you that she has a sore throat.

15 reasons humor fails at work

1. You tell a joke and nobody gets it.
2. Nobody likes people who affix cuss-words in every sentence. Why would they like a joke in every minute?!
3. You just outdid the smartest guy in the group, the self-appointed official jester.
4. You believe that cracking up relieves tension but nobody else agrees.
5. You like making fun of others but you do not like anyone making fun of you.
6. The person who is the current butt of jokes is going through a painful personal experience.
7. You have drawn attention of the entire group to physical, mental, cultural, sartorial, culinary or familial attributes of your colleague.
8. You have unknowingly offended a member of the group in the past, and he/she has decided not to laugh at your jokes anymore.
9. Your stab at humor is actually an attempt at humble-bragging.
10. You are telling a joke to a group of colleagues, and a late entrant walk in. the entire group then logs out of your joke and laughs at the quizzical look on the late-comer’s face.
11. Everyone takes her and his work seriously.
12. There are jokes that are ill-placed and there are jokes that are ill-timed.
13. Everybody hates the boss and the boss laughs at your joke.
14. You have said it once too often.
15. You are reading out loud a forwarded Whatsapp message.

15 Reasons Emails Fail

Theories on why emails don’t work where they are supposed to –
the work place.

1. Email as a power tool: you feel you are more powerful than the sender, and by not responding you unveil your aura.
2. The other side of power: you sincerely send an email hoping to receive a response from a power (inverse of #1).
3. Human as an email’s courier: you play your part by forwarding the email in your inbox to a third party with a crisp ‘fyip’.
4. Email as a distraction: At a particularly intense moment during a meeting, your eyes need much-needed respite from eye contact, and you turn to that email that has, at that precise moment, landed in your inbox. This happens when the meeting takes place in your cubicle.
5. Email as a full-stop: to signal the end of a meeting, particularly when you have finished your spiel, and it’s the turn of the person on the other side of the table.
6. Wrong name: when you write an email to someone but spell their name wrong, write their name in lower case, address a Mr. as a Ms., or plain simple sent the right email to the wrong recipient.
7. Stuck in outbox: When you don’t do send-receive. You realize this only after a heated argument where you insist that you had sent the email, and it’s the recipient who has not read it.
8. Lost in translation: by “sent it” you meant ‘whatsapp’ while the recipient expected email.
9. 25MB attachment: you take a coffee break and the internet breaks.
10. OOO: A person who is out of office will not respond.
11. Dear All: when you write to 10 people to get one task done.
12. Acting dumb: when you ask via email a query that has already been answered in a meeting half-an-hour ago, you get the response, “why are we discussing something that has already been discussed?”
13. Attention deficit hyperactivity: you read the subject and move on to the next email, and the next and the next.
14. Spam filter: wrong keyphrase, simply blacklisted.
15. Lengthy backstory: main message hidden deep in the fourth line of the seventh paragraph.

Volunteering 102

A first-time Volunteer believes each individual should start with having a goal for oneself.

We have all heard about charity beginning at home. We have also heard that what goes around comes around (meaning, if you do good, good will happen to you). But what good is good if the people it is meant for do not see value in it?

It is probably due to a lack of understanding of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs on the part of the giver and the taker. Teaching kids aspirational aspects of career planning may not strike the right chord if their focus is on the physiological base of the Hierarchy pyramid. Maybe, when you said that you here to help, they didn’t get you. Or, they felt you are standing in the way of a game of gully cricket, a few hours of rest after college or, on a serious note, helping out with their parent’s shop.

Whatever it may be, any idea we sow in the minds of the young is bound to trigger a whole new way of life. Here’s my experience:

I volunteered through my organization’s employee volunteering program to conduct sessions on personality development to a group of youth from a central Mumbai neighborhood. They were a mix of school dropouts, first and second year college students, a housewife and a social worker. They had all enrolled for a basic course in English and Computers. There was one other common thread – their idea of earning a sustainable income was limited (when asked about their goals, one replied “playing carom”, another “playing cricket” and a third enquired if he should continue with his B.Sc. or drop out try Engineering!). I conversed in Hindi, and many words, terms and phrases that we use in our daily conversations had to be explained.

Participation was more than I could ask for. I spent two hours each over five days. The first session had 15, the second 5, the third a different set of five…my own goal was each session should have atleast one individual eager to pick up tips on getting through a job interview and spending six months on a job he or she likes to do. The rest was up to the individual.

And the goal I set for each was to have a goal of their own, based on their strengths and what they would love to do. That’s what I told them to have on the top of their resumés.

I think that’s a good enough point to start, for someone who is a first-time Volunteer!

Math Ado About Nothing

Words in Numbers

If numbers help you remember, may be this will help.

• 500 ... average number of words in one A4-sized sheet in running text, single-line space, 12 point Times New Roman font, 1 inch margins.
• 272 ... number of words in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
• 101 ... American University course numbering system used for an introductory course, copied by authors to fast-sell self-help books.
• 100 ... percent of time you are always communicating, even when you believe you are not communicating.
• 90 ... percent of time while speaking in public to maintain eye contact.
• 50-70 ... percent of communications through body language.
• 30 ... seconds for making the maximum impact in public speaking.
• 30 ... seconds one gets to make an ‘elevator pitch’.
• 25 ... megabytes, maximum size allowed for Gmail attachments.
• 10-20-30 ... Guy Kawasaki’s rule (10 slides per presentation, 20 minutes length of presentation, 30 point font size).
• 10-15 ... average number of words in a sentence that readers can understand reasonably well.
• 10 ... points you win for a Q or Z in Scrabble.
• 3 ... key messages that your audience will remember in your presentation.
• 1.618 ... golden ratio.
• 1 ... one idea per message per screen for emails.
• 0 ... Zero, buck-toothed character in the Beetle Bailey cartoon strip.

If you like to add to the fun, maybe add to the list...