Of the 164 solutions to information overload included in my Definitive Guide, the last one is probably the least likely to be implemented – and that’s truly a shame.

The problem we seldom mention

I was discussing Information Overload a while ago with a thoughtful executive at a Fortune 500. The guy agreed with me that things were out of control, but he wasn’t impressed with the fact that he was receiving some 250 work-related email messages a day, most of which were pretty much useless. He said to me, “The problem is not the 200-odd useless emails; those I can clear in 30 minutes. The problem is that once I’ve done that, there remain maybe 40 serious emails that each require me to make a decision; and I simply can’t make 40 quality decisions in a single day”.

This is a realistic and insightful assessment of the problem, and one I seldom hear. And its implications are quite serious!

The solution we seldom consider

The title of the solution in the Guide is “Re-examine job scopes to keep email in control”. But to to many it may sound like “Hire enough people to do the job!”

See why this is unlikely to be implemented?

The point is that if this manager, and no doubt many others at his grade, have too many messages requiring real thought, then the solutions that help dispose of those “200-odd useless messages” – however useful – will not go all the way to eliminate the information overload problem. And until we develop much better AI capabilities, the “40 serious emails that require quality decisions” must be handled by a real person with a biological wetware computer in their skull. Which reminds me of those high school algebra exam questions: If one brain can process 15 decisions in 30 hours, how many brains does it take to process 40 decisions in one day?

Is the real issue (at least, for senior managers) not the total amount of incoming messages, as we often assume, but the fact that our managers are expected to do more managing than they possibly can?

If so, the solution indicated is this:

Examine job descriptions, and the related responsibilities and approval requirements, and take action to ensure that the email interaction demanded by the job is manageable.

This may mean a number of things:

• Providing more assistants – admins, TA’s, and so on. These, however, may be unable to assume the deeper kind of decision making required.
• Providing more execs – say, adding to each executive a second one, in “two in a box” fashion, and splitting the job’s decision burden among them in some sensible manner.
• Reducing job responsibilities, so the manager is capable of dealing with the remaining ones alone.
• Reorganizing, so there are more subordinate managers capable of off-loading some of the decisions from their boss.
• Modifying work processes. For example, changing approval processes to require fewer signatures or to delegate decision making to other people may cut down the load of email-borne approval requests.
• Any combination of the above.

Would this solution work?

Throwing more people at the work is tempting, but not without its risks. We can’t ignore the possibility that something may go wrong, for example:

• More people might merely create more email (A natural extension of Parkinson’s law).
• We may end up putting more effort into the symptoms than into root causes – and thereby take focus away from making the decision processes leaner.

Of course, the status quo is pretty dismal, so you want to consider all your options and implement what does make sense in your organization. Take the French corporation Atos: it is going through a 3-year process of examining all internal processes, identifying why and how they rely on email, and modifying them to work smoothly without this medium. So far they seem quite happy with their progress.

What you should do about this

More to the point, what should you NOT do?

You should not ignore this problem. Your senior managers’ time is worth a great deal, and the cost of delayed decision making – especially at their level – is higher still.

I’d recommend a structured assessment process to interview them and find out what is really going on. Then do something about it!

If you need help, I’m here for you.

Related Posts

Atos Origin is aiming to become email-free!

Slides of a short talk I gave on this subject at the Overloaded 2012 conference.