Email Assistants are the Rage
Chris Brogan is the man.
I mean, that guy is a thought leader in terms of Social Media, engagement, and communities. I can only imagine, truly, the amount of email the guy gets daily.
It’s so much email that he’s hired a personal digital assistant to help out with his whirlwind of a life. But here’s the thing: I thought a “personal digital assistant” was one of these…!
Yes, a PDA!
Now I understand that Kathryn does much more than just email (like manage his social networking requests, speaking engagements, flights, etc) but just think about it for a second: Can you imagine if you became this popular (or maybe you already are) and got so much email that it was impossible for you to personally manage it yourself?
I like the guy. Chris is awesome, so, I’m not bagging on him at all (and if he isn’t in your gooreader, go do that now!), but it does challenge me to think about how we’re using technology and when enough is too much.
Email is the communication center of our lives. Social media is, with lightning speed, creeping on it fast and is holding the #2 spot in a lot of people’s lives. If it becomes too much for us to handle, does that say something about us? Perhaps about our time management, our priorities?
I know that, culturally speaking, executives in businesses and senior/exec pastors have assistants to manage their inbox (Hey, I was one at a fortune 50 biz once… thank God no more), but the idea has never really jived with me. Why do we have to have other people to handle our email communication?
Sometimes I feel like the typical response of “because it enables them to do the work of the ministry” is lame, overused and undercooked. Perhaps that is their ministry and their letting others do it for them… but I’m just rambling now.
I’m not sure I ever want to be at a place where I can’t answer a personal email request by myself. If this “disqualifies” me from ministry, so be it.
//rant off
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12 Responses to “Email Assistants are the Rage”
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churchcrunch (churchcrunch)
New blog post: Email Assistants are the Rage http://tinyurl.com/6zzw4d
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human3rror (human3rror)
I “ranted” here a bit… prepare for an “opinion” post: New blog post: Email Assistants are the Rage http://tinyurl.com/6zzw4d
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Dude, I know exactly what you mean. I am like all the time. One of might pet peeves was automated email. When I was managing TheGdfc I would personally greet every person who recently joined and email every single one of them myself. I didn't have a person, or an automated email doing it for me, because I wanted the relationship between the member and I to be on a personal level, rather than just some email that is given to everyone, with no life. Cool thought and I don't think I ever want to get to that point.
So the beauty of having Kathryn is that she can help me prioritize. She knows what kinds of messages I want to answer quickly: Friends and family. She knows which ones I will want to read in a batch: pitches from PR companies (about 26 a day). She knows how to do all kinds of things that software filters can't do, and further, she can do it with a human touch.
Further, she can help me by reminding me when I haven't written back to someone I owe something to, which helps that other person out in an advocacy way.
I'm getting about 590 unread new mails a day, so it's getting harder and harder to do things rapid-fire. With Kathryn in place, I can respond appropriately to the things that matter most.
The human parts are all sustained, there are no robots, and everyone gets heard, which what matters, right?
Chris,
Thanks for stopping by and answering my question via twitter! You're everywhere…
It's amazing that you've kept the "human" parts in balance, and that's probably why you're well followed. Keep it going… we'll be taking note!
most definitely. have to keep the relationship alive.
We sure will, because I want to learn how you can pull off so many replies even when you do have an assistant. I say, start "paying" her soon. She deserves it.
haha, yeah, definitely. i wonder what her "day" job is…
I think that Chris is right on here. Leaders, especially in the Church but also in the marketplace, tend to get bogged down with things that are not as all important. Email is typically not conversational but informational. As an organization grows leaders must learn to delegate and empower those around them in order to be effective. In a previous job I would receive thousands of emails a day, largely irrelevant to my day to day effectiveness. Having someone else sort and prioritize them allowed me to be more high touch with my employees and my customers. Had I tried to manage that horrible monstrosity myself, I never would have seen the end of it, and all around would suffer.
One further thought specific to ministry…research suggests that people think that church leadership sort of has to contact them, thus they don't really factor that into a decision as to whether or not the church is welcoming or caring, but when members contact them it is meaningful. Jesus focused his efforts on his 12 and making sure he was accessible. Seems a good person to learn from, especially for Christians.
Yes, He "would" be a good person to learn from… thanks for leaving your thoughts scott. i've been rethinking this post and i've had some new thoughts about it… thanks!
"Email is typically not conversational but informational. "
That is right. And, that is why unless I am getting personal in the email, I don't care who actually typed the reply. If it's just generic information that I'm looking for, it doesn't matter if the assistant emailed it. Depending on how big the company or person is that I'm trying to reach, I almost always expect not to get a personal reply.
It's the auto-reply that doesn't answer my question that annoys me.
word, i agree…!