Here is something that I’ve done the past couple years with my staff, to help reduce email.

I have a slide that I present to (all 3 of) my schools in one of the few meetings I have with them all together. This slide, and my description of it, breaks down how to connect with me:

1. Can it wait for a face-to-face meeting? If so, no need to do any of the items below.

2. Call me. I get a phone call, it means come now! This doesn’t happen often, but it happens.

3. Text me. I’m trying to reduce this with #4, but if you need an answer, or would like me to come, without it being an emergency, a text is fine.

4. Microsoft Teams. No more ‘reply-all’ discussions in email! Teams has 2 key benefits to email. First, the conversations are contextualized – I have no idea what’s coming in for email, but when I have a notification in one of my teams, I know the group and topic of the message. Secondly, my teams get priority over the most recent email.

Also, rather that texts, @message me on Teams… I’m going to look here first, before email, to deal with my teams first.

5. Email. Really only used to follow up on emails from outside the teams, such as a parent asking a question or sharing something to be shared with me.

—

My final point, I describe a couple very specific circumstances to ‘double-dip’ (such as texting me to deal with a very sensitive email communication that I should address quickly). But, in general I emphasize that double-dipping shouldn’t happen. Choose one means of communication for a specific issue.

What I’m hoping to achieve isn’t less communication with my team, but rather more focussed and timely communication with them. This does not happen when their communication is buried in my email.