Blog. Insight, issues, opinions and productivity solutions

Why Business Travel Freezes are Bad for Your Business

Posted on October 15, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

A familiar knee-jerk reaction We’ve all been there. The economy goes into the down side of one of its never-ending spasmodic cycles and the word comes down: Freeze all business travel! The urge to batten the hatches when times get rough is understandable and necessary; that’s how responsibly-managed companies survive the hard times. It’s just that a sweeping ban on business travel makes no sense at all in the context of survival, because such travel has an important role in securing the future of the very company you’re trying to help. It never ceases to amaze me how the significance.. Read more

Alan Turing’s Earthshaking Philosophical Insight

Posted on October 12, 2012 · Posted in Off-topic

Being the curator of the Alan Turing Year exhibition at the Jerusalem Science Museum, I was invited to sit on a panel dedicated to Turing’s legacy at the ICON Science Fiction, Imagination and The Future festival in Tel Aviv. My talk there was well received, and touches on some interesting truths, so I decided to share its content here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have! Incidentally, Alan Turing’s life and work will be the basis of a new lecture I will be adding to my public speaking offerings. The subject is a fascinating one on so.. Read more

New Insight Article: Time Loss Effect of Information Overload

Posted on October 5, 2012 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

I decided to write a series of articles that analyze the negative effects of Information Overload in an enterprise setting (though many of the points noted apply to individual knowledge workers, such as small business owners, as well). The first of these articles analyzes an effect that is at once widely appreciated and yet often misunderstood: the loss of time due to email overload and interruptions, which has been quantified at a day or more of lost time per week. I’ve been looking at this for years, though my original work revolved around email overload and interruptions, and today a.. Read more

No Email Day: a Misunderstood but Promising Solution to Information Overload

Posted on September 21, 2012 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

A sure-fire way to jolt awake an audience in a lecture about Information Overload is to mention the solution known as “No Email Day” (NED) or “Zero Email Friday”. As soon as people hear the name, there is guaranteed to be a major protest. A whole day without email? This would never work! I wouldn’t blame you if you reacted the same way. How could it possibly work? And yet it does work, quite well, if you have the courage to try it and the wisdom to do it right. The problem is possibly in the name: “Zero email day”.. Read more

What’s in a Name? Name Diversity as a Factor in Global Collaboration

Posted on September 14, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Countless studies have been made of factors affecting Global Collaboration… but one factor seems absent from them. This is the cultural diversity of personal names. It’s as if this factor is a non-issue; which has always surprised me, because in my long career in a global corporation I’ve concluded that it definitely matters. Read on… Strange names leave you clueless in so many ways! If you work in a global corporation you are likely to be communicating routinely with remote team mates named, say, Ayelet Gilboa, Szendrey Erzsébet, John McDonald, SK Wong, Dögg Jónsdóttir, Phan Tấn Dũng and Pavel Andreyevich.. Read more

Will Gen Z Employees be Pre-wired for Collaboration in the Workplace?

Posted on September 10, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Uncategorized

Improving Collaboration in global teams is on most managers’ hot issues list. It has just occurred to me that for once, time may be on our side in solving this issue… The rise of the new multi-generational workplace  has brought much attention to the behaviors, expectations and perceptions of Gen Y employees, and HR people who have the bandwidth to look farther out are busy deciphering Gen Z, which will hit the workplace in a few years. Now, we all know that these young people communicate with their peers through social media and mobile devices, a fact that puts them.. Read more

Who Should Teach Future Employees Information Overload Coping Skills?

Posted on September 6, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

Houston, we have a problem Have you ever stopped to think how our information overload looks to a new college graduate? We all know that Information Overload is a problem; the staggering impact on the enterprise and the economy – about a Trillion dollars a year in the US alone – has been well documented. We know that knowledge workers in our corporations are in a state of constant distraction and stress; and some of us – myself included – are doing what we can to help them cope. But what of the inflow of new employees, those bright young.. Read more

The Dark Side of Information Overload

Posted on September 2, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

What I find fascinating about Information Overload in organizations is that there’s so much more to it than meets the eye. There is a distinct layer of causes to this problem that I’ve been referring to collectively as “The Dark Side of Information Overload”, and they have a real presence in the murky undercurrents below the surface of the corporate culture. The formal culture, with its mission statements and values emphasizing fairness and cooperation, never acknowledges this Dark Side; but the employees can unerringly identify it and respond with defensive measures that can result in anything but cooperation. I’ve been.. Read more

Trends in Information Overload: is it Getting Better or Worse?

Posted on August 27, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I was a panelist in a webinar about email overload and was asked by the moderator whether I can describe some trends of the Information Overload problem over the years. Well – I’ve been leading the battle on information overload in the workplace for 18 years now, so at least I have a long span of years to seek trends in… and it was a good question. How has the Email Overload problem evolved since 1995? My answer: I can give some bad news, and some – though not dramatic – good news. The bad news is that Information Overload.. Read more

Just Published: New Article on HR’s Role in Social Media Adoption

Posted on August 23, 2012 · Posted in Uncategorized

The August issue of HR magazine, which is devoted to Knowledge Management, published an article I wrote titled אתגר והזדמנות: ארגון משאבי אנוש כקטליזטור בהטמעת מדיה חברתית בארגון (Challenge and Opportunity: the HR Group as a Catalyst in Social Media Adoption in the Enterprise). It derives from my passionate belief that organizations need to embrace employees’ use of advanced IT and Internet tools, while guiding adoption sensibly. And being in an HR management journal, it speaks specifically of why HR is ideally positioned to facilitate the adoption of Gen Y tools and mindset in organizations often led by older managers… Read more