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There are three types of relationships:

• Personal – These are your friends (golf buddies, neighbors, parents at kid’s school, etc.); they like your warts and all and you choose them, making them rather safe.
• Functional – These are people you work with to perform your job or realm of responsibilities.  You build relationships with them, often because you have to (colleagues, customers, suppliers, etc.). You don’t necessarily choose all of them, but because of the context of your relationship, likewise they feel fairly safe.

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Increasingly, I find myself working on various speaking, training and consulting engagements in Canada. During a recent dialogue with some colleagues and clients there, I asked about the health of their economy. One of the most interesting responses I heard was, “Unlike in the U.S., our media is not trying to drive us into a recession.”

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In a relationship-centric culture – one that is unafraid of retribution and unafraid of failing forward, failing fast and failing cheap – and particularly in a sluggish economy, it is critical to keep overall morale high.

But with added pressure to execute, stress to reduce costs, and continued corporate cutbacks in various resources, this is easier said than done. Within the Relationship Economics framework, there are some very specific ideas you can implement.

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I spend a couple of hours each day following hyperlinks from various posts on Twitter, and a dozen or so interesting blogs I keep up with.  With the absolute information overload and 200+ emails / day that I receive, it really has become a “pruning” job – don’t keep up with it and whether in the inbox or on the Blackberry, it gets overwhelming quickly.

As such, a couple of years ago, I immersed myself into Macros and Rules in MSFT Outlook – this subject line, goes into that folder; emails from this address go into here; any of these words in the subject or body of the email, DELETE!

So, when I came across this article on Best Practices in Writing Email Subject Lines, I couldn’t help but to not only be intrigued, but wanted to share it as well.

Three tips for you on your Digital Etiquette:

1. Let’s use email for facts, not opinions!
2. If I have to scroll your email, please pick up the phone and call me!
3. Let’s stop cc’ing 15 people and then reply with “Thanks!”; no, “Thank You”; no, I insist “Thank You!”

What have you found to be effective in your email communication?

Particularly in an economically sluggish market, candidates more than ever need to reduce their “self-interest” and increate the perceived benefit / value-add to their perspective employers.  Here are 3 simple ways:

1. Pretend You Already Have the Job – what is your 30-60-90 day plan if you got the job tomorrow?  Give it some thought, send a well thought out plan to your perspective employer and start delivering, start researching, start meeting key industry people in preparation of getting that offer.  What’s the worst that could happen – you learn a ton and meet some interesting people?
2. Add Value Not Noise – I wrote in Relationship Economics that way too many people confuse vibration with forward motion!  Very few employees care about busy work – make your comments, suggestions, recommendations, value-add; if it becomes noise, it will get lost.  How are your ideas about how to do the job – any job, not just better (incrementalism) but different (innovation)?  How are they unique to you as the only person who can do the job at that level?  How will you raise the bar and make the manager, the team, and the organization look good.  Don’t tell me – show me!
3. Make it Quantifiable – make your value-add quantifiable!  Unless you’re making them money or saving them money, you’re overhead and in a tight economy, very few smart companies can afford overhead.  Show them how they can get a Return on Impact on their investment in you and this position – make it quantifiable and highlight the key assumptions you’re making.

What are you seeing in the market from creative candidates?