Responsiveness

We all have different expectations of responsiveness. With the proliferation of technology, we've become prone to estimating and timing the other party's response as soon as we send our message.

My dear, deceased father-in-law often relayed a far different timetable for response. When he began practicing law, deadlines were driven by train schedules. A document sent via train to New York wouldn't be received for days. This volley built in time for deliberation between responses.

The advent of fax communications provided a quick way to exchange information. But because it was transmission of a static document, time was still built in to manually edit documents before the next transmission.

With the broad use of email transmission of word-processed documents and the wide acceptance of email questions and answers, we've gained immediacy of communications, but sometimes at the expense of time for fruitful consideration of alternatives. Because the clock is ticking, we often respond with our first reasonable answer.

We can probably all benefit from the conscious communication of realistic time-frames for response to our important inquiries, orders and requests.