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August 30, 2006
Should you be responsible for solving overload?
This week, I’ve had three conversations with three separate clients about communication overload:
- One company is suffering from survey overload. It seems as if every department surveys employees (and it’s almost always all a census of all employees) about nearly every issue. Our client is planning a communication audit and worries about contributing to the glut.
- Initiative overload is an issue in another organization. Every initiative project leader and/or executive sponsor wants to make sure his program gets enough attention. That means they all want full-scale programs, complete with communication teams, a logo, events, a publication, a web site, etc.
- The third client continues to struggle with electronic (especially e-mail) overload. It’s gotten so bad that open rates are declining to embarrassing level even when an e-mail comes from the CEO. Increasingly, employees’ standard response is to delete e-mails without reading them.
In my last web log, I wrote about the idea of declaring e-mail bankruptcy to start afresh—but today I’m thinking that perhaps we need to broaden that concept to information bankruptcy. When all communication is treated equally—as if it’s extremely urgent and vitally important—it loses its differentiation and becomes an undistinguishable blur. White noise. Nothingness.
That’s why I ask: Who’s responsible for solving the problem of information overload in your organization? I’d like to suggest that maybe that person is you.
“Not so fast,” you protest. “I only impact a small percentage of the communication received by employees. And I’ve got so much on my plate that it’s overflowing. I don’t have the time—or the authority—to take on this problem.”
All true, but if you don’t address this problem, who will? It’s getting worse and worse all the time. It seems that every manager who can code HTML is creating graphic e-mails, and every professional who can create a Microsoft Word document is developing electronic newsletters. How will the madness stop unless someone, anyone decides that the problem must be addressed holistically and systemically?
It takes courage, it takes senior-level buy-in, and it certainly takes a strong stomach. But the person who leads the charge (because it will have to be a team effort, for sure) to slay the Information Overload Dragon will become a hero in the organization for sure.
Are you that person?
Posted by Alison Davis at 03:58 PM
August 23, 2006
Declaring e-mail bankruptcy
I just returned from vacation to find my e-mail inbox overloaded. I cleaned it before I left—deleted or filed a couple of hundred messages—but now things are out of control again, to the point where I’m too embarrassed to reveal how many messages are in there. (Some secrets should only be shared with one’s IT guy.)
That’s why I was so interested in a concept described by columnist Lawrence Lessig in the August issue of Wired: “E-mail Bankruptcy.” The idea is that, when you’ve reached the point where there are too many e-mails to deal with, you quit—“erase your debts and turn over a new leaf.”
Mr. Lessig’s method is to collect the e-mail address of everyone you haven’t replied to. “Paste them into the BCC field of a new message you’ll send to yourself. Write a polite note explaining your predicament,” he writes. After apologizing profusely and promising to do better in the future, ask for a re-send of anything particularly pressing. Then, delete all of your messages.
This is such a fascinating concept for personal e-mail management that I’ve got to believe it can be applied to a bankrupt system of e-mail—for example, in an entire organization.
Are people in your organization drowning in e-mail? Are too many electronic bulletins or newsletters being broadcast to large audiences? Do too many people have the right to hit “send all?” Is too much e-mail useless and irrelevant?
Why not start from scratch? Remember the concept “zero-based budgeting?” The idea was that you didn’t take last year’s budget and update it; you took a blank sheet of paper and developed a budget from scratch, questioning the reason behind every possible expenditure.
Do the same thing with e-mail. Put a ban on all e-mails except those that individuals send to each other. Develop strict criteria for when e-mails can be sent to all or large segments of the organization. Insist that e-newsletter or bulletin owners make their case before they can “publish” their messages.
Radical? Sure. But it’s just crazy enough to work.
As for me, right after this, I’m deleting all my e-mails. (Except, of course, yours.)
Posted by Alison Davis at 03:05 PM
August 09, 2006
What we can learn from a man and his blackboard
Next time you’re thinking about how difficult it is to reach your employees, because your organization is complex and your technology is outdated, consider this: What if your only communication vehicle was a blackboard? Or a portion of your employees didn’t read? Or if you had no budget and no staff?
That’s the situation faced by an extraordinary man in Liberia named Alfred Sirleaf, who has created a “news service” consisting of a shack and a series of blackboards that is one of the most widely read news report in the capital city of Monrovia. As Lydia Polgreen writes in the August 4 issue of The New York Times , Mr. Sirleaf is “something of an information evangelist, fervent in his belief that a well-informed citizenry is the key to the rebirth of his homeland, ravaged by 14 years of civil war. As the nation slowly comes back from the brink of annihilation, he said, he wants to make sure every Liberian can keep with the news and play a part in the country’s young democratic government.”
Although Mr. Sirleaf has no formal training, his approach provides lessons in how any of us can communicate more effectively:
Keep it simple. Says Mr. Sirleaf, “I try to write it really clear and simple so people can read it far away, even if they are driving by.”
Use visuals. Because so many Liberians can’t read, Mr, Sirleaf “has devised an ingenious system of symbols” that provide guidance on what each story is about. For a story about the difficulties of restoring electricity to the country, for example, he hung a kerosene lamp and an unlighted fluorescent bulb.
Avoid corporate-speak. Mr. Sirleaf avoids the kind of flowery language Liberian newspapers employ to appeal to the country’s elite. “I like to write the way people talk so they can understand it well,” he says. “You got to reach the common man.”
If Alfred Sirleaf can communicate effectively, so can you.
Posted by Alison Davis at 10:51 AM