Reliabilty: Answer EVERY Email
Last night I was at an MBA Executive meeting for BYU in Brazil, it was hosted by FGV (I know I am not an MBA, but they invited me because I am the first BYU exchange student at FGV). A Brazilian, Peter Furukawa the CEO of Grupo IMC and BYU Grad, was the speaker. I had not heard of him before, but from what I gather, he is very successful.
Many things he mentioned impressed me, but one in particular stuck. He said something like this, “Everyone makes mistakes and then we learn from them. If you try something and make a million dollar mistake, no big deal.” He had told about his biggest mistake in which he had lost $50 million of his own personal investment. “You cannot fear mistakes,” He continued, “But there is one kind of mistake you should never make, People mistakes. You can make hundreds of mistakes with strategy, money, and anything else, but it is almost impossible to fix mistakes with people.”
Peter then discribed when he spoke about an employee to a manager. Later that same day, the employee came in and said “You are an SOB! You told those things to my manager without telling it to my face!” What is impressive is how Peter handled it. He apologized immediately and wrote a letter to the man. He then gave copies of the letter to the whole team and apologized to the whole group.
He then told us that you cannot make mistakes with people. One thing he emphasised is that he NEVER lets an Email go without a response. He reads and responds to everyone. He explained that there are PEOPLE on the other side of those emails.
I agree with him completely. It has always bothered me when I write a nice email to someone and I never get a response. If you are anything like me you know that it happens often. Everyone seems to do it, but if you want to stick out above the crowd a good way to start might be to promptly respond to ALL emails. Even if that means you write “got your email, read it.” This is my new goal: I will respond to every email I receive that is written by a person.
Tags: email, leadership, people matter, Peter Furukawa