Who calls anymore? Some, but many fewer than before .... unless it's a robo call
It's surely not news that a lot of business communication has moved to the text and email.
Fair enough
But, that leaves much more communication open loop and unacknowledged than is/was the case with the telephone call.
That may not end well. Such open loop communications violates basic control-loop theory. To wit,
to have predictable outcomes, the loop should close on the sender as a means of confirmation of message received.
So now, as non-verbal correspondents, we have the responsibility of upping our game.
Some help is found in the essay "How to get every email returned"
From that essay and my own experience, my advice is this:
- Keep it short!
- Write in bullets where ever possible.
- Don't exaggerate ... when discovered this kills your credibility
- Don't guess; meaning: say only what you know
Perhaps; it depends
I worked for a few years for a Asian company with Asian managers. Culturally, those managers put more emphasis on facts than comparable American managers. In my experience, Americans were/are more tolerant of ambiguity, uncertainty, hunches, instincts. Often, these are wrapped in emotion
One last point, circling back to closing the loop:
- Ask for acknowledgement. Often, the "open-loopers" are unaware of the poor practice of not closing with their correspondent
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