Why ‘'I'll get back to you soon’ may not be a good reply?

It was an interesting experiment I did last Saturday. The trigger happened the previous day morning in at a podcast. Kunal Shah and Paras Chopra talked about lack of precision ingrained in our culture in many ways and how that affects even corporate productivity. If you have not watched Paras's Bold conjectures, I strongly recommend that.

The Saturday experiment

I searched my mailbox for instances where I said, I’ll get back to you soon’ and/or where I got replies - ’I’ll get back to you soon’. Ok to be precise may not be exactly the sequence of words, but anything towards that effect. You get it -  no clear ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) mentioned.

Now I looked at those conversations to find when the actual time of arrival was, be it some project, a piece of information, confirmations etc.

You may think this is a very strenuous exercise. No. I just searched for the keywords, grouped them as conversations (most mail clients do that now).

The results were surprising for me, though I had 60min+ podcast as a context.

‘I’ll get back to you soon’ Time of Arrival varied from ‘1 day to 3 weeks’. 

My 'soon' is not the same as your 'soon'

So, for you, what is soon? Is it 5 mins, 5hrs, 5days…? Does your definition of ‘soon’ change soon? I am not absolving myself when I told ‘soon’ it had meant different timelines.

Why 'I'll get back to you soon not enough?

1.      Soon is not precise. Since you don’t have some idea in mind what soon means, in many cases we don’t prioritize those actions. The result - delay in getting back.

2.      In summary, My Soon is not the same as your soon.

What happens because of this confusion?

Just imagine if I have told one of my colleagues that ‘I’ll get you this information soon, by that I meant in a day. But my colleague thought it was 1 hr. After one hour he did not get want he expected. He follows up. I wondered why he followed up. She thought why I was not professional enough to return back with the information ‘on-time.’

Now just imagine if she were your manager. Bad, right?

So, how can we fix this?

1.      Tell an ETA ideally like the flight schedule screens at airports – by 12noon. I am not a big fan of - in 1 hr, 1 day but it’s better than soon. Remember EOD (end of day) COB (Close of business) are still confusing for the same reasons why ‘soon’ is confusing.

2.      If you don’t know how much time you will take to get the deliverable as you may not completely know the amount of work required, tell them a time for you to get back with more precise details.

3.      If you are asking for the information or favor, request a good time by which they can get back.

I can assure you the world including the corporate world will be a better place if we can remove ‘I’ll get back to you soon’ and his cousins from our lexicon.

Do these situations sound familiar? Do you have any tips that worked? Pls, share the article if this makes sense and would be great to see the tips in the comments/shares.

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