Email to Executives

You’ve established yourself as a trusted resource and now your boss’s boss’s boss is asking you for something. Use this opportunity to boost your credibility by following a few general principles. Answer the question. Obvious, right? As an executive leader, I’m often astonished at the amount of blinding detail I receive when I’ve simply asked a yes or no question. I’m not saying you shouldn’t check and double-check your analysis so that you can stand by your answer, but don’t make the executive wade through rows and rows of data, hoping she’ll come to the right conclusion herself. You can provide additional detail if you’d like, but answer the question first. When providing an explanation, do so in the form of an executive summary. Do not include the gory detail unless the executive is the type that likes to have detail in hand and you’ve explained why the detail is provided. For example: Executive It looks like our Gizmo contract renewal is increasing by $200K this year. Are we okay with the increase? Rising Star Budget Analyst The answer to your question is yes. Here’s why: • We included room for a $190K inflationary increase during our annual planning cycle. • We renegotiated the ACME contract and realized $20K in savings vs. budget. • As part of annual review, we’ve identified potential reductions in two other major contracts. If you’re interested in seeing the status, as well as detailed analysis of our annual contract renewals, I’ve attached a spreadsheet to review at your leisure. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can provide. <<end>> With this response, the executive got the answer in a 30 second read. Finally, as a courtesy, you should cc your boss on the answer so s/he is in the loop. Also, attitudes toward “chain of command” vary considerably from manager to manager. Make sure you understand to what extent your management structure wants to review your response before hitting send. Other tips?