Archive for the 'Organizational Solutions' Category

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

How You Can Stop the Abuse of Reply to All

Posted on August 14th, 2012 · Posted in Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

Reply to All: probably the most hated feature of Email. How do I know? Because whenever I work with clients to reduce Email Overload, one request pops up right at the beginning: Can we put a stop to the abuse of Reply All? Yes, you can. But before I talk about solutions, let’s consider why anyone would misuse Reply to All in the first place, if they hate it so? Part of the problem, and the reason the feature is retained, is that it is really about enabling two very different functions: Conversation: When communicating within  a small team, it.. Read more

A laudable approach to paring distributions

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

I recently received a message from a manager in a hi-tech corporation who had applied a technique I’ve never seen before to the matter of removing unnecessary people from dist lists. The context is that I was corresponding with his boss, who delegated to my current sender; and the latter decided to drop the boss from the continuing exchange, removing him from the addressee list. So far so good, rare but not unheard of. The twist was that at the start of the email this guy had put in the line (Removing Joe from the thread) Not only had he.. Read more

Organizational altruism

Posted on June 23rd, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Following a lecture on information overload my audience – a management forum in a midsized company – was discussing in small breakout groups norms for improving their messaging effectiveness. When the conclusions were read to the entire forum, we had many of the usual useful suggestions, but one team had a truly unusual contribution. They proposed that when one receives an email with a question that is best answered by someone else in the company, one should not forward it to the appropriate recipient right away. That is, say I’m the expert on left-threaded widgets and I get a mail.. Read more

How to make programmers efficient

Posted on May 6th, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

I was talking to a manager of IT systems in a financial organization, and she told me of an impressive step she’d taken to improve effectiveness. She had a group of programmers working for her, and they were suffering – as do we all – from frequent interruptions. So she removed the (landline) telephones from their rooms! She also made it known that these people were not to be interrupted by other means, and thereby allowed them to do what they were there for – write code. The results were very evident: efficiency in this team had visibly improved relative.. Read more