Stop! information overload & organisational pathology

A few posts have popped up in my feedreader about information overload recently. Firstly Ross with a reprint of a very sensible article on dealing with information overload (which I would recommend in its entirety).

Then Stanley Bing says:

what [constant use of phone & blackberry] does is that feeds control freaks with a constant, steady stream of stuff that needs to be controlled. That's what's making people more crazy. And what happens is that everybody goes crazy in a different way. In other words, some people get extremely morose. Other people get very paranoid.

And Merlin Mann goes on:

I can envision a world where sweating over your beepy electronic device starts looking about as “executive” and “pro-active” as sucking on a crack pipe in the break room

And continues:

I think one of the emerging leadership skills of the next five years will be learning how to do brilliant filtering

Which ties in with this post by Michael Watkins about pyromaniacs:

These days, pyromaniacs’ favorite incendiary devices are Blackberries and their Windows Mobile cousins. At the same time they have accelerated communications, these devices have dramatically lowered the barriers to lighting fires; now it’s just a few keystrokes away.

What I want to highlight from these various posts is that information overload is not simply a technological issue. It's a behavioural & psychological response to a changed environment. It's not just the proliferation of email/mobile phones/IM/etc - there are other drivers as well:

• Both managers and employees feel under pressure to deliver results and have access to more & more information. However, more information does necessarily yield better decision-making - just more stuff to plough through. The assumption is that better information technology means fewer staff - rather than more.
• Most organisations talk about "work/life balance" but have an unspoken rule that you just need to get it done. And "it" is 40% more than last quarter.
• Most organisations equate productivity with activity. And, my, don't these technologies allow us to be active.
• Specific individuals within organisations can trigger cascades of inefficient activity through their use of ICT (Watkins' pyromaniacs).

At the organisational level, dealing with information overload and its resultant pathological behaviours requires:

• A proper understanding of what productivity means (& how you measure it). If a productive manager is one that makes good decisions, how do you measure how good their decisions are?
• A clearer understanding of the relationship between patterns of ICT use and that worker productivity.

At an individual level, each of us needs to do the same. I have something of an email habit, clicking "refresh" on my inbox like a rat in a Skinner Box - but I don't have a PDA/Blackberry (which is a bit like a meth addict proudly claiming not to touch heroin). I have decided I need to have one email-free day a week. The computer will stay off*.

We also need to examine the relationships that are mediated through these technologies. Are we driving people crazy with our behaviour? How do we manage ourselves to get the best out of our interactions with others? For some of us, this might be too painful. Best get back to hitting them with emails/txts/IMs I guess - that'll learn 'em.

What does all this boil down to? How we learn to say "no" better.

*I may need to find a higher power to call on for that - a tasty chicken korma perhaps.