"Please Let Me Know Your Thoughts"

That's how the email ended.

I used to think email was a wonderful tool — faster communication, greater efficiency. Over the years, I've changed my mind.

If there's one skill that everyone in corporate America should be continuously improving, it's written communication. As technology evolves, this simple and critical skill is increasingly overlooked. People fail to appreciate the repercussions of poor written communication.

At the start of my corporate career, right after I graduated from law school, I had a habit of writing the way I was trained: long, detailed emails that exhaustively covered the subject matter. It didn't take long for a C-suite executive to call me and let me know that, although the detail was appreciated, the length was not. I was asked to stop writing lengthy emails.

On the other extreme, I've watched executive after executive send one- or two-line emails, trying to be efficient, only to trigger a cascade of back-and-forth exchanges. The result is a de facto chat.

Messaging platforms don't fare any better. Both email and chat are too often used lazily, producing back-and-forth exchanges that could have been resolved in half the time with a single well-written message or a direct call. What no one accounts for is how much of this becomes busy work — an issue handled at three times the cost because no one took five extra minutes to write it properly the first time.

Let's call it what it is: it's easier to procrastinate and kick the can down the road through inefficient communication. Suddenly, more than half your time is spent reading and responding to emails like an endless tennis match. Reading and responding to emails is considered part of the job, and resolving projects is assumed to require doing exactly that.

A proper communication protocol is about measuring twice and cutting once. A single well-written message that addresses all the relevant parties, includes the necessary details, and anticipates how you want recipients to respond goes a long way.

Take "Let me know your thoughts." That's open-ended. If the matter is pressing, a call would have been more appropriate. But if email is the right channel, there are better ways to close the loop:

• "Can you confirm whether this schedule aligns with your team's availability?"
• "Please review the attached document and share any concerns about section two."
• "If you agree with this approach, I'll proceed by Friday — please confirm."

These alternatives narrow the request, guide recipients toward specific actions, and prevent open-ended exchanges that waste time. As you write, focus on clarity and closure — not just feedback, but progress. How will this message move the project forward? How can you prompt the recipient to take meaningful action rather than reply with a one-liner?

A culture of brutally efficient communication can be built inside an organization. If your organization embraces ruthless efficiency — so everyone can win back time and focus on what actually matters — you'll see employees holding each other accountable. A results-oriented organization gives people ownership of their time. Better communication is a major part of how that happens.