By now there are many people out there helping others to cope with, and mitigate, information overload. Some, like me in my  previous career as an Intel Principal Engineer, do it because it’s their job and helps their employer. Others, like me in my current consulting career, do it to help our clients. Either way, it’s always been my passion, but you could argue that it’s also a living, and that’s true: we get paid to apply our knowledge and skills on behalf of the companies we help out.

But there is a third type of people who act against the flood of information, and they aren’t paid to do so. I ran into one of them recently at a large Fortune 500. This guy contacted me and asked to discuss my views of email overload; of course I was happy to do so. It turned out, he told me over a cup of coffee, that he’s organizing and delivering lectures on IO that he’s developed himself, to groups of employees all over his company. It wasn’t part of his job, and he did it above his ordinary day job; indeed, given the way people are fully loaded, it probably came at the expense of his meager free time. But he was passionate about freeing his coworkers from the weight of all those countless messages of dubious value, and he went about it with great enthusiasm. He was making a difference.

What this guy was, of course, is a Grassroots Change Agent. Being a change agent is hard enough when you’re a senior engineer with the support of your management; doing it by yourself from below is outright daunting. It is also invaluable; this guy, and the other heroes like him throughout the business world, have my admiration and respect!