Archive for the 'Organizational Solutions' Category

The Legitimacy – or Otherwise – of Ultra-brief Emails

Posted on April 18th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

A devious solution to email overload A friend pointed me to a post  that offered a simple and highly unusual solution to email overload: change the signature block on your desktop email client to read “Sent from my iPhone”. The idea, the writer explained, is that this will make you “feel more comfortable offering short, direct, and concise replies to incoming emails, thus improving your email productivity and freeing up time to do other more important work”. This is certainly devious, is probably effective, and the logic seems unassailable… but it raises a question: why would you need it? Surely.. Read more

Radical Email Overload Solution: Batching Email Delivery

Posted on February 19th, 2013 · Posted in Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

One of the worst causes of information overload is the constant arrival of email into the knowledge worker’s attention sphere. With new mail arriving every few minutes, people can never fully focus on their work. If they haven’t turned off the “you’ve got mail” alerts they are passively distracted; if they have, a sizable fraction of users still distract themselves by checking for new email every few minutes. What is needed is a way to prevent this checking. A radical email overload solution concept Over my years of helping companies fight information overload I’ve devised my share of original solutions;.. Read more

New Insight Article: The Makings of a Good Corporate Telecommuting Program

Posted on February 12th, 2013 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Some companies think Telecommuting means letting employees work from home. They’re wrong.  Telecommuting does involve working from home – but there’s a lot more to it, and many companies don’t realize what it takes to do it right. Of all the changes in workplace methodology that I’ve led at Intel, the one I’m proudest of is the Telecommuting program. Because we’ve done it right, resulting in a true Win/Win for the company and for countless employees in it. What made it such a success was the fact that we didn’t just allow people to work from home as individuals; we.. Read more

How YOU Can Achieve Work/Life Balance in the Face of Information Overload

Posted on December 18th, 2012 · Posted in Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

Work/Life Balance and Email: an irreconcilable contradiction? We all know the facts (if you don’t, check out my articles). Your typical knowledge worker receives 50 – 300 email messages daily of which 30% are useless, and spends some 20 hours a week dealing with them (The Israel Internet Association passed out a survey before my lecture there the other day, and the results affirm these facts once again). These numbers mean that people are trying to overcome their overflowing Inbox around the clock, including evenings, nights, weekends and vacations. Any pretense at Work/Life Balance has disappeared with the arrival of.. Read more

How You Can Deploy “Quiet Time” to Increase Your Group’s Productivity

Posted on December 13th, 2012 · Posted in Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

When I speak to knowledge workers about solving information overload, I mention some fairly hi-tech solutions: software products that prevent, reduce or help combat the infoglut they all struggle with. And while those are useful, some of the most effective solutions are entirely lo-tech. I already wrote here about No Email Day; let me now tell you about the solution called Quiet Time. How to disconnect and (maybe) win a Nobel prize As everyone knows, William Shockley won a Nobel Prize  as one of the team that invented the Point Contact Transistor at Bell Labs. As many don’t know, he.. Read more

How I Bring Value by NOT Teaching Time Management

Posted on November 27th, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

I was explaining to a friend what I do in Information Overload space and at some point he said he’d thought I was doing Time Management consulting, and now he realized I don’t. Which set me thinking, and I realized there are two approaches to the problem, and indeed mine is not that of promoting Time Management practices directly. Why time management training does you good When I say Time Management consulting,  I refer loosely to the practice of educating people on how to handle their information overload in the context of improving their overall work, task and time management.. Read more

Why – and How – You Must Teach Employees Professional Email Composition

Posted on November 22nd, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Whatever happened to the art of message composition? In times past, people communicated by letters written on paper, and there were excellent incentives for applying optimal composition. People of good upbringing learned how to write a proper letter as part of their general “liberal arts” education, and children got the basics in school when writing essays and assignments. All aspects of a good letter, from polite salutation to clarity of content, were taught – and scrutinized by both senders and recipients. Writing a poorly crafted letter was shameful and derided; and so when people reached the workplace they knew how.. Read more

Why and How Retirement Workshops Should Teach Baby Boomers About Social Media

Posted on October 22nd, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

A serendipitous request Much of the cooler stuff that I do happens serendipitously, when someone hears of me and comes with a request for something different. In this case it was a friend of a friend who runs workshops for corporate employees approaching retirement. She wanted a lecture about the Internet, to be given to retirees of a Lo-Tech company. At first this seemed a problem:  I consult about social media adoption by Gen Y in the enterprise, but that’s the very opposite of Lo-Tech Baby Boomers in their mid-sixties! But as I thought about it I realized that a.. Read more

No Email Day: a Misunderstood but Promising Solution to Information Overload

Posted on September 21st, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

A sure-fire way to jolt awake an audience in a lecture about Information Overload is to mention the solution known as “No Email Day” (NED) or “Zero Email Friday”. As soon as people hear the name, there is guaranteed to be a major protest. A whole day without email? This would never work! I wouldn’t blame you if you reacted the same way. How could it possibly work? And yet it does work, quite well, if you have the courage to try it and the wisdom to do it right. The problem is possibly in the name: “Zero email day”.. Read more

Who Should Teach Future Employees Information Overload Coping Skills?

Posted on September 6th, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

Houston, we have a problem Have you ever stopped to think how our information overload looks to a new college graduate? We all know that Information Overload is a problem; the staggering impact on the enterprise and the economy – about a Trillion dollars a year in the US alone – has been well documented. We know that knowledge workers in our corporations are in a state of constant distraction and stress; and some of us – myself included – are doing what we can to help them cope. But what of the inflow of new employees, those bright young.. Read more