As you become more senior in your career, you start noticing something: most people are terrible at writing email. It's not surprising - we're never really taught how to do it well, yet we spend hours each day in our inbox. In today's Mentor's Corner, I'll share some unconventional email strategies that will make you and your team more efficient.
This is Coached Weekly, my career notes where I share the tiny % of ideas that actually work in real careers. It takes 5 minutes to read, but could speed up your career by years. I write this myself and I read your replies. —Rohan Mahtani (LinkedIn).
The 20-second Career tactic
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Speak slower and pause more
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A military tactic I use for saving 90 mins/day on email comms
A badly written email can waste 30 minutes of someone's day.
Multiply that across a team and you start to see why most managers are accidentally one of the biggest drains on productivity — not because of what they decide, but because of how they communicate it.
Nobody teaches you this. So today I'm sharing a few email tactics I've picked up from managing people and studying how great executives write (like in my Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg email teardowns).
If you manage people, your team will notice the difference. If you're early in your career, this stuff will set you apart fast.
🪖 BLUF.
A lot of us think a well structured email should something akin to an Agatha Christie novel:
Context
Walkthrough of option A
Walkthrough of option B
Walkthrough of option C
My thought process
Pros/cons of each
Bottom line
Thus, the key decision is…
Instead?
Send emails the military way: Bottom Line Up Front, or BLUF for short.
Here, you just stick your key decision or idea up front, flab and fluff be damned:
The key decision is …
3 key reasons why
1.
2.
3.
I’ve put details of my thought process below if you’re interested.
[then include further details, but only for interested readers]
Notice how execs and CEOs communicate too. For example, here’s Sam Altman emailing Elon Musk back when OpenAI was founded in 2016 (the email was leaked as part of the OpenAI <> Elon lawsuit).
Sam could spend 500 words breaking down all the numbers or telling a story of why he needs the funding, but he knows Elon’s busy and he’ll get a quicker reply if he was super direct:
And if you’re mid-senior level, you should even try:
💪 BLUF on steroids
This is where you put your key decision… in the subject line. I learned this from an ex-manager — we’d get emails like:
============
Subject: We should cut back on R&D spending starting Q2
Body:
Here’s why:
Blah blah blah”
============
No niceties, no hellos, no “hope you’re all well.” Just launching straight into it.
And guess what?
We loved it.
(No-one likes long email comms, who knew? And it makes it SO easy to dig up the email when you’re searching for it later!)
So, if you’re leading a team, try BLUF, and at the very least ditch the vague subject lines and start with the “meat”.
Bad: “Quick question”
Good: “Reschedule client meeting for 3pm.”
😚 Drop the pleasantries
Yes, we all want to be loved and respected. But… if you’re on a first name basis, brevity will be more appreciated than fluff.
=====
Bad:
Hey Rohan, hope you’re well and thanks for your email a few days back. Re: the client meeting, I’ve just got off the phone with them, and we’re gonna need to reschedule for 3. Is that Ok? If not, please let me know.
Thanks!Sarah
=====
Good:
Rohan, just got off the phone with the client – they need to reschedule for 3pm. If that doesn’t suit, let me know. If all’s good, see you then.
Sarah
===
Obviously, how many pleasantries you drop depends on who you’re talking to. For colleagues, I’d drop ‘em all. For clients and seniors, I’d leave more in.
♟️ The tactical P.S
Don’t ask me why, but people tend to look at the P.S first.
Use this to your advantage if you wanna add extra emphasis to something. For example, as a leader, use it to call out a certain team member:
Good: P.S Melissa, great job on the forecasting slides.
🔕 No reply needed
If you don’t need a reply… let people know you don’t need a reply.
How?
Just add a quick “P.S No reply needed.”
This can save a huge amount of back and forth.
🤖 AI *might* be making your emails worse
Look, I'm not anti-AI. I use it a lot. You probably use it. It's great for first drafts, fixing grammar, structuring your thoughts.
But: most people hit "generate" and then hit "send."
And the result is emails that sound like this:
=====
Bad:
Hi team, I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to share some exciting updates regarding our Q2 strategy. After careful consideration and thorough analysis, we've identified several key opportunities that I believe will position us for meaningful growth moving forward.
=====
Translation: "We have a Q2 plan." That's it. That's the email.
AI adds filler by default. "I hope this finds you well." "I wanted to take a moment." "After careful consideration." It's fluff. And people can tell - esp when you know someone’s voice and an email sounds so different to them!
So if you're using AI to draft emails, great - please do. But, run it through the BLUF filter. Ask yourself: would I actually say this out loud?
If the answer is no, rewrite it until it sounds like you.
Hopefully that’s a piece of advice you haven’t heard before. If you enjoyed this:
Forward it to a friend, family member or colleague. It does truly make a difference.
If someone you know is on a job search, tell them to check out Resume Worded. It’ll make their job search a lot shorter.
Speak soon,
Rohan Mahtani
Founder at Coached & Resume Worded
Btw, I like reviews. They motivate me to keep the quality high. Like this recent one:
Thank you, Gabby!
You can leave one here. I’d appreciate it. Thank you so much.
🤭 In all unseriousness
A few laughs to keep you smiling until next week
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