Know your audience and their communication channels

It doesn’t do any good to flag something as “URGENT – CRITICAL – EXPEDITE” in the e-mail subject line if you don’t know that the person is actually on, checking their e-mail, etc.

If something is that urgent, use a medium that gets more immediate feedback.  IM, or even (gasp) phone calls can be very effective in this way.

This has been a public service announcement.