WNA #9: Disregarding my own advice & the moment of truth
The truth is that emails and instant messages are often conveniently consumed whilst in the middle of other activities.
I am quite positive that at least one of you is reading this very newsletter in the bathroom. Or while watching TV or deciding what to have for dinner. I don’t blame you — it’s just a part of modern life 📱.
Hold that thought.
Communication is exchange of information. Sometimes, information is simple and requires little context or introduction. “I’m on my way,” for example, or “check out my new shoes wdyt?”.
In our line of work, most information is much more complex. A fact that we often overlook. We’re neck-deep in whatever it is we’re working on, so we naively assume that our clients know what we’re talking about when we send them something to review.
They don’t. They’re busy doing other stuff. They’ve forgotten almost entirely about our last meeting. It’s not their fault — that’s just how it works.
So when we send clients something like an updated proposal or a new design or anything that requires at least a tiny bit of background information, chances are, they
Hold on. One second let me just—
Alright.
Yep. Uhu.
—sorry about that. Where were we? Oh, right.
Chances are they will look at it while taking a shit, being interrupted by a bunch of notifications, listening to a podcast, or all of the above. As a result, they miss most of the subtle nuances that are so often crucial to our work.
Q: So what should we never do?
A: Send important updates through email, let alone over direct messaging. Anything that requires more than 1 minute of uninterrupted attention, we present. Over the phone, web conference, or in person. It doesn’t have to take hours, but we need to be able to substantiate what we did and why we did it.
Sharing our work any other way is a roll of the dice because we give up control of the narrative.
Q: Guess what I did?
A: I sent my updated proposal to the publisher as an email attachment.
Q: Guess what he did?
A: He didn’t open the attachment. That, or he forgot about it entirely. I don’t know what’s worse.
When I talked to him to discuss next steps, he asked me a bunch of questions that the updated proposal literally addressed. At first, I was a little disappointed in him for not opening or remembering the attachment. After all, I put a lot of thought and effort into it. But within moments, that disappointment turned into feeling like an idiot for neglecting my own advice.
January: the moment of truth
Anyway, we smoothened things out, he didn’t like the cover design (more on that some other day), but he was still positive about the endeavour as a whole. After the meeting, I sent him the latest draft of the entire book, and he promised to get back to me with a decisive go/no-go somewhere in January.
Lesson learned. Fingers crossed.