Status updates people read

For two years I sent a Friday update to eleven people. I know now that about three of them read past the first line. I found out because Oluwaseun told me, kindly, in a corridor, that he just scanned for his own name.

So I rewrote the format. The update is now short enough to read in the preview pane of the mail app, and it has the same four parts every week.

1. What shipped, in one sentence.
2. What I need from someone, with their name next to it.
3. What is at risk.
4. What is next week.

The “need” line goes high because that is where an update earns its keep. If I am waiting on Ines for a content review, she sees her name on Friday afternoon instead of discovering on Wednesday that I was blocked.

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The length

My old updates ran to about 350 words. The new ones run to about 90. I resisted this for a month, because it felt as if I were doing less. A shorter update does not mean less work happened. It means I did the editing so eleven readers did not have to.

The things I dropped

I stopped listing meetings I attended, and I stopped explaining the reasoning behind every decision. If someone wants the reasoning, there is a note, and the update links to it.

The open rate, which I can see because the mail tool tells me, went from roughly 30 percent to 80 percent over six weeks. I do not trust that number much. Replies went up too, and replies I trust.