Remote colleague not answering your email ?

“No doubt you can recall a time when you were perplexed by a remote colleague’s behavior. Are they not answering your email because they are busy? Uninterested? Both? Maybe they didn’t get your email? When we are not collocated with our collaborators, we make up our own accounts for their behavior and infer what their motives might be. We engage in this kind of behavior because the digital tools that make our physical separation possible lead to what Catherine Cramton, Professor Emerita of Management at George Mason University who has spent her career studying digitally enabled collaboration, calls the “mutual knowledge problem.” Mutual knowledge is the information that we need to achieve mutual understanding. It is the common ground that people need to reach. Perhaps your colleague has not answered your email because they have taken the day off. Or perhaps they had to attend to a pressing project or your email landed in their spam folder. ”

Excerpt From: Paul Leonardi. “The Digital Mindset.”