Archive for the 'Organizational Solutions' Category

Coming Next: the Definitive Guide to Information Overload Solutions!

Posted on February 10th, 2014 · Posted in Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

Whew! Finished at last!… As I mentioned in a post a few months ago, I’ve been hard at work writing an encyclopedic compilation of every solution I know to Information Overload, from software to training tools, from behavior change drives to personal strategies, from commercial products to innovative ideas. This seemed to be a never ending task, with new solutions popping up all the time; I finally had to recall that wonderful adage, “In every project comes the moment to shoot the engineers and move into production”! So, I arbitrarily closed the list and found that I have 164 solutions.. Read more

Default Settings for Scheduling a Productive Meeting

Posted on November 8th, 2013 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

In a perfect world… In a perfect world, your calendar application would have a slider control in the meeting scheduling interface captioned “Productivity”. The slider would have calibrations next to it, ranging from “Total waste of everyone’s time” to “Superbly productive meeting”.  Anyone scheduling a meeting could select whether they wanted the meeting to be effective, and how much so. Then again, in a perfect world, would anyone select a setting other than “Superbly productive” for their meetings? So  we could eliminate the slider, and just have the default setting be  the productive one. Right? … and in our world.. Read more

NIZ and NIW: Warding Off Dangerous Workplace Interruptions

Posted on September 27th, 2013 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Workplace interruptions can kill. No Interruption Zone around amedication cart in an ICU  (Source) We’re so used to them that we forget how the incessant disruptions caused by phones, BlackBerries, incoming mails, and coworkers popping in for “just a quick question” are wreaking havoc on our ability to focus and think, with dire results for our productivity and creativity. The problem becomes outright fatal in critical work environments where lack of focus can lead to life threatening mistakes: distracting people like medical staff, airline pilots, or flight controllers can definitely lead to disaster. Then again, even where danger to life is.. Read more

New Insight Article: How to Launch an Information Overload Program in Your Company

Posted on September 11th, 2013 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

While I’ve been doing many different and wonderful things since leaving the cube farm (and, come to think of it, before then as well), the one I can honestly claim the most special experience with is helping organizations solve the problem of Information Overload in a structured manner. And while every company is different, requiring me to customize my intervention to the local company culture and other details, I have by now developed a general approach that seems to work well. In my new insight article I explain this approach, which should allow you to apply it in your own.. Read more

All Right! Email is Finally Adapting to the New Millennium!

Posted on August 14th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

Email solutions for the era of Information Overload These days I’m hard at work on a major effort: I’m writing a white paper I call “Solutions to Information Overload: a Catalogue Raisonné”. It will be an encyclopedic compilation of every solution I know to Information Overload, from software to training tools, from behavior change drives to personal strategies, from commercial products to innovative ideas. And the more solutions I include, the more I find – there will likely be over 150 of them! While many of the solutions I include have been around for a decade or more, I am.. Read more

Dissent and Acceptable Cost for an Information Overload Solution

Posted on June 21st, 2013 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

A different cost concept When I say “acceptable cost”, you might think I mean how many dollars and dimes you should be willing to invest in an Information Overload Solution, whether it’s a software tool or a training intervention. That is not our subject, however; besides, any attempt to do an ROI calculation is bound to show that practically any cost is worth investing – the damage of Information Overload to both individuals and companies is so huge, that any solution that will solve even 10% of the problem is worth its weight in gold. See this detailed calculation for.. Read more

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