What you say and how you say it are so important, particularly in written communications. We’ve dug into topics like audience-centered communication and writing for busy executives, and this post is a natural part of that conversation. Email has become the main form of communication, and as a result all of our inboxes suffer. We are all dealing with inbox fatigue in both our personal and professional lives, and it results in folks skimming, missing, ignoring, or misinterpreting our well-intentioned messages. In this post I want to talk about a very specific challenge that accompanies email: we need to think about who needs to see this. We have started using TO and CC interchangeably without considering their purpose and best use cases.

The Order of Engagement

I’d like to introduce a framework for determining who goes where.

ACT / TO The person required to act — the decision-maker and action-taker.

KNOW / CC People who do not need to respond but need to stay informed. Everyone in this group can see who else is included.

SEE / BCC Use sparingly — mainly for large announcements where you want to prevent reply-all derailment.

TO: Your Primary Recipient

TO is your primary recipient — both when sending and receiving. TO should be the person the email is for. Think back to a letter: you only addressed it to one person who needed to read your message. Everyone adopted email as a form of communication with little to no training. It’s never too late to shift how you use this medium. You can start small — with your team or your organization.

By implementing a clear order of engagement and properly using TO/CC/BCC, you can avoid miscommunications, confusion, too many cooks in the kitchen or no cooks minding the boiling pot. When you use TO intentionally, everyone in your organization understands what is expected and who owns what.

CC: For Visibility, Not Action

CC has unfortunately been used as an extra TO field. When copying someone on an email it should be for visibility and awareness only — no action required other than staying informed. As Merriam-Webster notes, CC traces back to the carbon copy — a record kept for reference, not a call to action.

We do have the ability to use @ to tag people in our emails to highlight that their input or action is required. The problem with that is it can create confusion about whose input is nice to have and whose is need to have — and ultimately, who is able to provide input versus who makes the decision. As I’ve said before: One Subject, One Email. I think it’s best to have one intended recipient and action-taker per email. The one situation where multiple recipients in the TO field makes sense is when sharing meeting notes with action items. If you don’t have a task management tool, this is as good a way as any to keep the right people informed of who owns what.

Before you add to an ever-expanding CC list, ask yourself:

• Do they need to know this?
• Is it the right time and medium to inform them?
• Is there a chance a reply-all might derail action?

As a recipient: if you are not in the TO field, you are not the primary recipient — so don’t reply. If you have to respond to a CC, make sure your input is absolutely necessary and keep it brief. Only reply if you have critical information that changes the outcome, or if you are specifically asked for input.

In some organizations, CC has become a way to keep people who like to stay close to the work feeling informed. This can be a challenge to manage, but if you keep the email focused and action-oriented, and recognize when it’s time to end the thread and have a meeting, you can take a lot of the pressure off your correspondence. As UCLA’s workplace email etiquette guidance puts it, CC should be used sparingly to avoid inbox bloat and the attention drain that comes with it.

BCC: A Narrow but Useful Tool

Last but not least — BCC. It has a use case, but I find it’s best used to avoid reply-all scenarios rather than for clandestine communications or hidden recipients. For example, if HR needs to be aware of a situation, either include them openly or share separately. There’s nothing subtle about a hidden recipient — it has a way of coming to light and undermining the very trust you’re trying to protect. Short of emails to the entire staff, organization, or large distribution lists where you want to prevent a flood of replies, BCC isn’t a great regular practice.

The Order of Engagement Works

When you establish a clear order of engagement, you respect everyone’s time. Your team knows who needs to act and who doesn’t — and that clarity is where people thrive. Email doesn’t have to be the minefield it’s become. When everyone understands the rules of engagement, the right people act, the right people are informed, and your organization stays focused on what matters most.

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This post is part of an ongoing series on workplace communication. If you haven’t already, start with Stop Writing for Yourself and Writing for Busy Executives.