Stop!

Don't hit that send button. The half-life of a juicy management email is a lot longer than you might imagine. Your email will probably bounce around the office for a painfully long time before its impact starts to fade. And if it has the slightest entertainment value, it will end up on the Internet for approximately the rest of your life. Worst of all, your heart-felt electronic missive may not even hit the mark with your own team.

It's just so tempting

There are very few things in management more satisfying than delivering a directive at the speed of light. Send an email and your thoughts are instantly distributed to your unsuspecting audience. You can then move on to the next thing on your list. Hmm…would that be to write another email? If you really need to say something significant, write down your thoughts to help bring some clarity and organization to them before you talk to your people. Just don't dump your brain and blast its contents out in an email.

Get a real job

Like most people, you probably feel like you're accomplishing something when you write an email. After all, you tell yourself, communicating electronically is much more efficient than sitting in meetings. Everyone wants to avoid those long, unproductive in-person sessions -- at all costs. The truth is that an email may actually create more work for you, because you have to spend time: 1) writing the perfect email that is sure to get your team moving in the right direction; 2) writing 10 different emails in response to the questions about your email, without sending anyone into a funk; and 3) figuring out how to take back what you said in your email, because you put your virtual foot in your virtual mouth.

Don't let misunderstandings compound

If you have something really important to say, then don't send an email. Emails are great for the mundane, but not for dealing with the complexities of human interactions. Of course, all emails are created equal when they hit your inbox. So it's easy for people to abuse email just to get attention from you and from their colleagues. The problem is that most people have difficulty communicating in writing. Even if you start with an email that is pretty innocuous, the misunderstandings compound quickly. That's because people are trying to make sure that their viewpoints get heard -- by everyone -- without the usual filters that accompany in-person communications. Before you know it, your original message has created a firestorm that takes one of those dreaded meetings to straighten out. So much for efficiency.