email overload

[jelena_faine]

Hello everyone.  I've just started a new job and am looking for a few ideas on how best to handle a mountain of emails (over 100!) that seem to be arriving every day.  A friend suggested placing all emails where my boss has been CCd into an excel doc and giving him a summary, but when you work with someone who has an attention span of a mosquito and cannot sit at his desk for more than 10 min at a time, this is probably not the best solution - I'd probably end up with 20 pages every day! I need a way to get the message to him fast without 'overloading' him.
Also if you have any suggestions on how to keep track of tasks he allocates to his team in a fast and accurate way, please add them to your list of suggestions.
Any help you can offer is appreciated!  Thank you in advance.

[gee4]

I usually let my boss deal with his own emails when he's in the office and I deal with anything when he's out of the office.  Simple - that way there is no duplication of replies and you are not at cross-purposes wondering if he actioned this or him thinking did you action that.  I sit down with my boss once a week (Monday mornings) and go through anything for the week.  Having said all that I read his inbox occassionally for a heads up on anything else.

You need to sit down with him and ascertain how HE wants YOU to manage him.

G

[raindance]

My boss deals with her own emails, and I can't add much to what Gee has already said to you.

With regard to tracking tasks, I give people deadlines, use the task list in Outlook and put reminders in my calendar on Outlook to follow up progress.

Raindance

[bethalize]

Hello, Jelena.

How much responsibility does your boss want you to take? If he is happy for you to manage his inbox you can delete things or handle them to get them down. Quite frankly if the man isn't going to read the summary then there is no hope for the actual emails!

You could set up a rule to move everything where bossie is CC'd into a separate folder. It will still be his job to read it all - and it will be marked 'unread' until he does - but it won't clutter up the things sent directly to him.

You can use the organise function to mark emails sent only to him in a different colour. I find this one quite useful. I have emails only to me in blue and list emails in green. I think that the sender is the most significant piece of information in an email to help you judge what to do with it. I respond to different people with different priority levels and this would support that theory. If that applies in this situation you could get him to indicate what priorites people have for him.

I'm not seeing a quick and easy answer to this one I'm afraid. Would he work better if you could get the notification to his PDA or mobile phone?

Bethalize
Peer Moderator

[msmarieh]

I use rules and folders also. For instance, outside emails (such as lists he signed up for, marketing messages etc) can be filtered into their own folders.

I also use the color coding and flag for followup (right mouse click on the message, choose flag, select date and action).

You can filter by thread to keep track of original emails and subsequent replies.

Marie

[jbinney]

Between my boss and I we get a couple of hundred emails a day!  I sort them into folders for him, you don't want too many folders otherwise you're just creating another problem for yourself.  We just have 'Action', 'Customer Issues', 'Jane to action' ie me!, 'Reading' with a sub-folder for Circulars when you can set up rules to automatically move rubbishy bits automatically.  He knows he has to read the folders action and customer issues if nothing else.  If I see stuff that has a deadline in it I drag a copy of it into his tasks and set a reminder date of a day or so before the actual due date, likewise if someone sends through a briefing note, say for a meeting in a week or so's time, again I drag into tasks with a title of 'Must read before xxxx' and a task date of the day before the meeting - and then put time in the diary to read the material from the task list.  Sounds a bit confusing - but it works for us!