Managing Expectations

The headline of the article in the print edition of Wednesday's New York Times Business section read "Sales Miss Forecast at Amazon." The online version was more pointed. "Amazon's Revenues Disappoint." Judging by the number of Amazon boxes I saw delivered on an average December day to my West Side building, I found this difficult to believe. So I kept reading.

Once into the article you find that their revenue for Q4 was up 35% at a staggering $27.43 billion. But Amazon's showing was considered "poor" because it was off nearly a billion dollars from what analysts were expecting. This apparently caused shares to "slump"in after hours trading on Tuesday by $18 from a high on Tuesday of $194.44.

No doubt these kinds of reports combined with the press spreading the news made for an uncomfortable work day at Amazon with people feeling bad about "disappointing" and worrying about how they were going to make up the shortfall and from where.

But from my outside the corporate confines perspective, all I can think is how absurd this is. Where have we gotten to in our society that we are disappointed because $27.3 billion dollars in quarterly revenue in  a snail's pace recovering economy wasn't $28.3 billion. What has happened to the word reasonable when setting expectations? And isn't this why so many of us feel like failures?

We set the bar so high it becomes unreachable. And when we don't make it, we feel like we have disappointed and failed, when the thing we have failed at most is acknowledging just how far we have come.

9 Tips For Using Email

As I was saying yesterday, your email says a lot about who you are and how you interact with others. You can gain a customer or lose one. Deepen a friendship or splinter it. It’s your choice.

If you find that your email is getting the better of you, here are 9 suggestions to put you back in control.

1. Check it at least 3x a day and act on it. My preference is to sit down at my computer in the morning, before lunch and at the end of the work day, set my timer and give my email my full attention. 
2. Respond immediately or send it off to someone who will. The rule for paper was not to let your hands touch anything more than three times. In technological terms, don't scroll over and read something more than three times without acting on it.
3. Get a smartphone and have your email accounts sent to it.  And don't forget to use it. You don't have to wait until you are in front of your computer to read an email .
4. Organize your email. Separate the importance stuff from the newsletters you can’t seem to live without. I use Apple’s Mail Preferences which allows me to set up rules for my email. This enables me to send email directly to folders I have set up. For example, I have a folder for Shopping Newsletters, which prevents my Daily Candy from competing for time with a potential client. I have a folder for my Inspiration Newsletters which is where I collect all those inspiring daily quotes  I like to read. I have one for News of the Day that gets my NYTimes and WSJ updates. This keeps my main email inbox clean for the important stuff that needs my immediate attention. 
5. If you are so “busy” and so inundated that you can’t find the time to manage your email, you need to take a look at what exactly you are so "busy" with. Your problem may be bigger than your email. It may be your time management. 
6. Use spell check. And then proofread spell check. If the content is really important, forget about the trees for a moment and print it out before sending. It is amazing what typos and inconsistencies show up when you are reading from a piece of paper that you won’t catch on your computer screen. 
7. If it’s a really important communication, let it sit for a while and reread before hitting send. Especially if it is something that has you emotional. Think of it as soup you are preparing, that needs time to simmer before it is ready to be served.
8. When replying to something that has a distribution list, slow down before you hit send to make sure it's going to exactly who you want it to. Because once you hit send you can't take it back.
9. Remember this is email. You are putting more than your important words in writing. You are putting you in.  And with the click of the forwarding tab, your message can be sent anywhere to anyone, with or without your knowledge. Take the time to make sure it is leaving the impression you want it to.

 Do you have tips to add? What do you consider email best practices?

What Your Email Habits May Be Saying About You

I write a lot of emails. Every day. Sometimes they are to complete strangers I’d like to do business with. Sometimes they are to people I know really well. Sometimes people I know not so well. Sometimes I am responding to a reader of my blog or someone who wrote me a note just to say how much they loved my novel. Sometimes I am asking for something.

I’m not one to let my inbox pile up. It goes back to my early days in sales when I was taught to act on a phone call or letter immediately because it could mean money. It was a way to build relationships. My response time made the statement that I cared, enough to not let them wait. It was a chance to make an impression. Like the clothes you wear, the choices you make in hairstyle and eyeglasses, the way you shake someone’s hand when you meet them for the first time, I was taught this was a window to my personality and a barometer for whether they might want to do business with me.

We don’t have a lot of chances to make impressions into today’s virtual world.  Email is one of those opportunities and yet so many throw it away. They use it carelessly, never considering the message they are sending is also one about who they are. Think about it.

• We use texting symbols like u instead of spelling out the whole word and forget that spell check does not know if you meant here or hear.
• We ignore people we have never met as though they are something that got caught in the spam filter.
• We ignore people we know because we are too busy to deal with them or their issue. We accidentally hit reply all when we only wanted one person to receive our message.
• We write like we speak, often off the cuff and without forethought, forgetting we are putting this in writing without any idea on whose desk it might ultimately land. Then we wonder how we got into so much trouble. 
• We let it pile up until we really are too busy to get through it all.
• We lie and say we never got it, underestimating the sender who has already started to notice that you are the only one who never gets anything they send.
• We wait just long enough to answer to imply to the sender they are really not that important.

Before email, we relied on the telephone or perhaps a letter typed on real paper that was proofread for typos and put into an envelope with a stamp on it. Of course now we worry about killing trees, and the telephone, well that is so yesterday. But making an impression is not.

How you respond to my email tell me about who you are and how you do business. 

• A high level executive for a major corporation who emails me back the same day or even forwards my email to one of her lieutenants  with a copy to me, tells me that person stays on top of their business and probably their life. It also insinuates that they really care enough about their company to know that I might have something worthwhile to share. I might be wanting them to buy something from me, but I am also a potential customer for them.
• The newly minted best-selling author whose talk I attend and write a complimentary follow-up email who takes exactly one year to reply thank-you to me says scattered and thoughtless and makes me wonder why they are even bothering now. They missed their opportunity to gain a repeat customer for their next book.(this is a true story!)
• The friend who takes days to reply to my email, but then harasses me with texts and phone calls when I don’t immediately respond to theirs implies self-importance.
• There is the person who disappears in the middle of the email thread. That’s like hanging up the phone on me in the middle of a conversation.

I could go on but, I have email to answer.  Just remember whether this is business you or personal you, your email habits are a statement of who you are.  The question is, what impression do you want to leave?

Tomorrow: 9 Tips for Using Email

A Dose Of Agapi

I am biased. No doubt. You'll find most Greeks are. There is an affinity we hold for each other. Meet someone and find out they too share your heritage and you are already friends. As a child it drove me crazy. My father would point out this person and that person who had achieved some notoriety and add with great pride, a wink and a smile, "You know, Joanne, he's Greek." As if no matter what they had to say, whether I agreed with their view or not, it didn't matter, because now we were bound.

I didn't understand it. I found it lacking in judgment. Shouldn't we know more about the person than just that their last name is equally difficult to pronounce much less spell for the average person? But now I get it. In these last months since I released my novel, I have reached out to Greeks as far and wide as Australia and have felt that bond and connection that I chastised my father about.  As an adult, I too have fallen into his rhythm. I meet someone who I discover has genetic ties to Greece and I do as my friend Agapi would say, unbind my heart a little more easily.

I'm not sure the reason, because in all honesty, just being Greek is not enough to want to call someone your friend. But I do think there is something different for Greeks. Maybe it goes back to the long illustrious history, the philosophers and astronomers and great mathematicians of ancient Greece or my favorite, the Greek Gods and Goddesses. It is different to be Greek. A flavor that is more unique than just the combination of nuts and honey and cinnamon that create a baklava. It's a different brand of wisdom influenced by a culture that has stood the test of time.

Which brings me back to my friend Agapi Stassinopoulous. I met Agapi  this past summer in San Diego at a conference I attended where Agapi spoke. I liked her immediately. Not just because she was Greek, although there is no doubt that was our immediate point of connection, but because it was obvious from how she spoke and her energy that this was a woman who lived authentically and joyously and with an open heart. I learned of her new book which would soon be published and was honored when she asked me to read a galley copy.

When you read another's writing, whether it is fiction, or in the case of Unbinding the Heart, A Dose of Greek Wisdom, Generosity and Unconditional Love,  a memoir, you learn a lot about the person. You can tell authentic writing from pretending to be authentic. You can tell the difference from someone who walks from what they speak or who prefers to merely point you on the path they think you should travel.

Agapi in Greek means unconditional love, and that is what you will feel when you read this memoir. Her love for life, and for helping others jumps off the pages as she entertains and enlightens with her insight and subtle humor. Agapi is the real deal.  She writes of living with an open heart and she demonstrates it, never negating how the world wants to make that difficult. Reading this memoir you will feel like she has invited you to sit with her awhile under the shade of an umbrella at one of those beautiful outdoor cafes in Santorini, nibbling on fresh feta and tomatoes, sipping a glass of wine, with that magical blue of the Aegean as a backdrop for the stories she shares of her journey thus far.

So yes, if this sounds biased it is. But my bias is supported by this captivating read.  Unbinding The Heart, A Dose of Greek Wisdom, Generosity and Love,  is now available for sale. I encourage you to pick up a copy. You will not be disappointed.