It's okay to declare bankruptcy
Daniele Catalanotto
Nov 16, 2022
This Service Design Principle draft has been sent to my by Jochen Bergmann by email. I put here so that we can all collaborate on this more easily:
No, not in the literal sense. But sometimes, you've messed up, or you've just amassed a ton of small tasks that you cannot possibly deal with and for most of which you've passed the deadlines, anyway.
If you e-mail client is you're workhorse for communication, you've seen it: 100s of e-mails, unread of course, in your inbox.
100s more in folders called "To Do", "Urgent", "Future projects", "collaboration" etc.
And you know that if you open some to these e-mails, missed deadlines, lost leads and a bad conscience for missing follow-ups will jump at you.
100s more in folders called "To Do", "Urgent", "Future projects", "collaboration" etc.
And you know that if you open some to these e-mails, missed deadlines, lost leads and a bad conscience for missing follow-ups will jump at you.
Time to reset things: Move everything older than 2 weeks to an archive. Then tell your environment: "I'm sorry! I've messed up and have lost track of my e-mails. Therefore, if still relevant, please resend any e-mail that you've sent until ten days ago."
There seems to be a whole art this: https://fullfocus.co/email-bankruptcy/
And it needs to be seen in light of a general improvement of your inbox management. I train customer-facing staff in customer communication, so e-mail management is of paramount importance. You cannot declare e-mail bankrupt every quarter and get away with it. So just like after a financial bankruptcy, you need to up your game in handling, prioritizing and efficiently writing emails.
This concept can be generalized to "declaring bankruptcy" in other fields. You've been aiming to take up film photography or learning that additional language for 5 ears? You haven't touched that trombone of yours even during the pandemic?
Relieve yourself of the bad conscience. Either make room for it in your life or abandon it.
Relieve yourself of the bad conscience. Either make room for it in your life or abandon it.
In the framework of Service Design, this should be possible for both ends:
- The customer may also say "sorry, I don't have any customer number or documentation, but could you please help me out with my repair issue"?
- Or a service agent: "I'm new to the company and I cannot find any information about you in our file. Sorry for this, but let's tackle this one by one."
Possible titles
Declare bankruptcy, alternatively "Step up or give up"