Archive for the 'Organizational Solutions' Category

They saw the SUN!

Posted on March 19th, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

An argument broke out during one of my lectures, about whether a “No Email Day” could work in the organization I was speaking at. Most attendees felt it couldn’t – not unless the electric power were cut! And then they recalled that this had once happened to them… Turns out that in a large building power has been lost for a number of hours and all mail was inaccessible. Now, you’d think this would be a negative experience in their memory – but it was not. They all started describing it to me excitedly: how everybody in the building had come.. Read more

No computers allowed!

Posted on February 24th, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

I’ve reported before on the policy of leaving Blackberries outside meeting rooms… and now I’ve heard of a policy that tops that. An attendee approached me after my lecture on Email Overload solutions today and told me that in the advertising agency where she works it is forbidden to bring notebook computers into meetings. She used to find this objectionable, but having heard me explain the damage of checking email to the effectiveness of meetings, she could now understand why it was a good idea after all. Being in advertising, where their meetings were about hammering out creative ideas, they.. Read more

Volkswagen shields its employees from its own Blackberries

Posted on December 24th, 2011 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

The proliferation of Blackberries and similar Smartphones has contributed significantly to the erosion of the Work/Life barrier, and has caused knowledge Workers to assume – erroneously, perhaps, but with conviction – that they must be on call 24×7. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly among my clients: people send and receive emails at all hours, and make a habit of checking their Blackberry every few minutes. Convincing these people to stop this addictive behavior is hopeless: I’ve run an experiment along these lines a few years back with a group of engineers and despite all exhortations to the contrary their behaviors.. Read more

Cues for useless email?

Posted on September 28th, 2011 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

One of the slides in my Information Overload lecture analyzes the root causes of sending useless email, and goes into the very human motivators stemming from mistrust in many corporate cultures. One of these is CYA – sending mail, or copying too many people on it, to cover one’s backside. So in a recent lecture one of my audience, not being a native English speaker, raised her hand and asked what CYA meant. I translated it for her and explained how people might send mail to people who had no need for it merely to cover themselves from any objection… Read more

Some powerful role modeling

Posted on August 25th, 2011 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Here is a wonderful example of how a manager can drive the battle on Information Overload in person. A manager of a large tech company told me that he is personally very intent on making his company “quiet” in the direct sense of doing away with the endless ringing and loud conversations that the ubiquitous use of cellphones has brought into the open office spaces in his plant. This is of course wise, because the constant distraction by the phones of one’s coworkers is known to be a major disruptive factor in creative thinking, productivity and quality of work. So.. Read more

The unsung heroes of Information Overload

Posted on August 3rd, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

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.. Read more

The one-page principle

Posted on March 18th, 2011 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

There is a quote attributed to Mark Ardis:  “A specification [or a design, a procedure, a test plan] that will not fit on one page of 8.5-by-11 inch paper cannot be understood“. This is called “The one-page principle”. Other than being a snappy quote, this is something to consider seriously. A significant aspect of the email overload people suffer is carried in the attachments; indeed, my first inkling that email was becoming a problem, back around 1994, was when a senior manager in my workplace had declared that he refuses to read any email that has any attachments at all… Read more

Go home to your children!

Posted on March 1st, 2011 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

One affliction of the modern knowledge worker is that people don’t see their children: first, because they work late in the office; and then, because they spend their hours in the home clearing their email. I was pleased to read in today’s morning paper, then, that the Israeli civil service is going to adopt policies that will mitigate at least part of this issue. A report whose recommendations were approved by the cabinet will make government employ more parenting-friendly. There will be  summer camps for employees’ kids, there will be a  move to output-based employee assessment (rather than time based),.. Read more

Atos Origin aiming to become email-free!

Posted on February 15th, 2011 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

Impressive news from France: last week Mr. Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos Origin (a 49,000 employee global IT Services company) has announced that the company aims to be email-free in three years. More impressive is the fact that this is evidently not just talk; Mr. Breton, speaking to the press, has justified this decision with an insightful set of observations, which in turn are grounded in hard data collected by the company and others. He also reports that his company has been implementing new tools that will eventually replace email for internal communications, notably collaboration and social networking platforms. I’ve.. Read more

An overlooked, sure-fire way to regain work time

Posted on January 29th, 2011 · Posted in Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

I was talking to a client who – like most of us – needed more hours in the day, and he complained that part of the problem was that he was required to generate long reports, and it took him hours and hours just to type them in. So I asked him, how does he type? Turns out he uses two fingers to peck at the keyboard. I asked him, why not ten? Why doesn’t he touch type? Of course he couldn’t touch type, nor was he planning to learn to; and neither do almost all the knowledge workers I.. Read more