Showerthought: I swore off phone calls at work for 2 years, then one 6 minute call saved me 3 days of email
I used to be that person who would type out a 400 word email before ever picking up the phone, swore it was more professional and gave people time to think. Last Tuesday a vendor in Tampa called me instead of replying to my fifth email and we settled a shipping mess in 6 minutes flat, stuff I'd been going back and forth on since the previous Thursday. So now I'm wondering, is my whole 'email everything so there's a paper trail' thing just me being scared of talking to people, or does anyone actually have a good reason to keep doing it?
Man, the paper trail thing is real but here's what nobody thinks about: emails don't actually protect you the way people believe. A call can get summed up in a quick follow-up email that says "per our call, here's what we agreed" and boom, you have the trail AND the speed. So the choice isn't talk or document, it's do both in the right order.