At the age of sixteen, I worked for a major supermarket franchise at the grocery “department”. My job: make sure all displays where stuffed with groceries. During this very boring process I had to grasp the concept of “FIFO” (first in first out). Basically, it makes sure that products with later expiration dates were sold later than the products with earlier dates.
However, just a few weeks ago it got me thinking: LIFO. Last In, First Out. During several e-mail conversations, it occured to me that people tend to respond first on the issue you wrote last in your preceding email.
Dear John,
Thanks for your response. How’s your wife? On the matter: could you please inform [department] of [important thing]? Those issues in at Production really need looking after.
Considering the [important client], please be aware of [important thing]. I expect a report in three days on my desk.
Kind regards,
[Supervisor]
What is John going to respond?
Hi [Supervisor],
Thanks, she’s fine. You’ll have the report within three days.
John
John replies on the last issue in the e-mail, because that’s what resonates after reading. I’ve tested this with several of my clients and when using a story-telling kind of reporting, they tend to reply on the last (few) items. The reason behind this remains unknown to me. In the illustration above I tried to emphasize that John first replies to the remark about his wife. I consider this more valuable to John than his work affairs (at least at that time). He notices the friendly interest his supervisor shows and therefore replies to it. That said, I think LIFO is not a matter of order, but of importance and the way important things resonate.
Solution
I’d like to propose three solutions.
- My personal favourite: give all the issues (items to discuss or decide) the same importancy weight. One way to do this is using a list. Just write down all issues, roughly using the same length. Try not to start every sentence with the same words, which make them look too similar and could expose the first and last items more. You could categorize them on subject, urgency, etc. but make sure this doesn’t emphasize items more than others. The result: the bias against more important, more outstanding items fades away. All issues are created equal.
- One issue per e-mail. I believe this is proposed in Tim Ferris’ book (4HWW). The downside of this solution is that when you have lots of issues to discuss, it gets annoying to send a dozen email (and let others read them).
- Don’t use email for issue tracking and decision making. It’s time consuming and not suited for issues with a lot of “properties” (urgency, importancy, who has to decide this?). Use some management software for it, like a bugtracker or ticket-based programs. This enables you to render issues using the same set of properties, presented in a generic way, plus adding extra features to (hopefully) boost productivity and result outcome.
Happy communicating!
