I have a colleague on my project team at work who regularly complains that no one responds to his emails. He usually copies me on them and it’s plain to see why no one responds. His communications are vague. It’s not clear what he wants, why he wants it or even who should respond, as he often addresses multiple people in the opening greeting.

The need to make requests and to delegate tasks is a common feature of working life. If no one responds then you can not move forward and you feel somewhat helpless and frustrated. If you are not careful then this can soon create an excuse for procrastination and subpar performance.

There is a way to get much better and quicker responses but it does require you to do more preparation, i.e. work (sorry about that, but I’m afraid it can’t be avoided). I’ll start with a little analogy using a fictitious practical problem as that will help to understand what is in reality an abstract problem.

Imagine that someone gave you a picture of a complex Lego model (the biggest Lego model is a replica of the Millennium Falcon - Wow! Check this baby out!). They give you an instruction to say “Make this.” That’d be a pretty tricky thing to do. You have no materials, no design, no process, and no idea of how long it would take or how many people it will need.

It would be practically very, very difficult to do. It would require a lot of brain work and a lot of trial and error experimentation. It might be that you like that kind of challenge, but if you already have a bunch of other demands on your time then you will naturally do what you can immediately do, which is the easy stuff.

Imagine that for some reason of skill or authority, you are the only person that can finish the model. The person who wants the model, wants you to deliver it as soon as possible, so what could that person do to make the task easier for you and preferably immediate? That person could progressively make things easier by doing the following:

• Provide a clear specification of what the model must look like
• Provide a clear set of instructions on how to create the model
• Provide the exact materials
• Provide the materials organized into the parts needed for each submodule
• Provide finished submodules of the model

Ideally you would end up with everything prepared for you so that you can take the final completing actions that only you can make to finish the model and deliver it.

Now then, in the competition for your attention and your effort within an organization, which task would you choose to do first. The request with no clear specification and no supporting preparation, or the one that is so well prepared that it would be hard not to do it immediately?

If you want fast results from the people that you depend upon, then you must make that task as easy for them to do as possible. The more problem solving you expect of them, the harder you make it for them. This means that they are more likely to keep putting off your task until some other reason occurs that forces a response. In essence, you design-in the grounds for procrastination!

When you create emails, or make requests of a colleague, then do the following:

Provide a clear specification - Tell people the exact result that you are looking for. If it helps to engage them, then give reasons why this result is necessary so that they understand the importance and how this task fits into the overall picture. Include a time for when this must be done and the consequence of a delay.

Provide a clear set of instructions - It might not be your place to tell people how to do their jobs but you can tell people how you want the results delivered, such as the sequence of results and the delivery dates.

Provide the exact materials - If you have resources available then include them with your emails or give appropriate links.

Provide organized materials - If you can, then take your resources and extract relevant information to make it easier to have the right material to hand for each part of the process that the other person must carry out.

Provide finished subsections of the work - If there are parts of the whole set of tasks that you can do for the other person then complete them.

Additional tips:
Tell them that you have done this preparation work in an effort to assist them and to get the job done easily. Show that you are an ally. You can even phone people in advance and ask them directly how you can prepare the work so that they can get it done as soon as it arrives.

Keep your request focused on one problem at a time. If you ask for responses on a multitude of things then you will get the easy, instantaneous responses and the rest will often get overlooked. For additional problems send a separate email.

Make one person the key addressee. If you are not sure who is responsible, or you want a response from different people, then send a separate email to each person. Otherwise Person A will hope that Person B will do it and vice versa and the likelihood of no response at all greatly increases.

By doing as much preparation work as possible for the other person you make it much easier for that person to get the parts done that only he or she can do. The best result is if you can prepare the way so thoroughly that it is actually more difficult and bothersome for the recipient to put off doing the task than it is to do it as soon as it arrives.

Whenever people have to think, i.e. do conscious problem solving, to get something done you increase the chances of delay. Whenever people can immediately react using their existing store of knowledge and ability, you massively increase the chances of getting a quick result.

You might feel a lot of reluctance to do this because you might feel that it’s the other person’s responsibility to do the task and most of the time you are probably right. However, in today’s working environments we all face a multitude of activities competing for our attention and our time. If you care about getting things done in the most effective and quickest way, then you will accept that some sensible preparation effort is a cunning way to compete effectively.

When the people around you are moaning and whining about no response and continuous delays, you can smile inwardly because you play the game at a superior level. You also play win-win because you make life easier for the people that you depend upon and over time they will be happy to deal with you, firstly in the instant that they get the mail and secondly, over the long-term because they know that you are a pro. You are someone who gets results through cooperative problem solving and not through coercion.

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