BizTechTalk Briefs 07/21/2010

Information overload vs. filter failure « TimeBack Management
Nice post tying lean thinking and doing root cause analysis on information overload. Agree that's it's not that there's too much information - there always has been, since well before anyone currently living. It's the amount of information that you're actually expected to consume, understand and react to that's gotten out of control. Nice quote re: Peter Drucker: "In an earlier post, I talked about how Peter Drucker viewed an excess of meetings as a sign of a dysfunctional organization. He wrote that: 'Too many meetings always bespeak poor structure of jobs and the wrong organizational components. . . if people in an organization find themselves in meetings a quarter of their time or more — there is time-wasting malorganization. Too many meetings signify that work that should be in one job or in one component is spread over several jobs or several components. They signify that responsibility is diffused and information is not addressed to the people that need it.' I wonder if you could say the same thing about too much email. Yes, when you’re collaborating with teams located in different offices around the world email is a incredibly useful communication tool. But lord knows that there are plenty of people, teams, and companies that don’t have that convenient excuse. The root causes behind our biblical email plague are myriad — and almost certainly don’t involve something we can’t fix, like a vengeful god. Asking questions that reveal the root causes can help you take appropriate countermeasures. It’s a better approach than blaming email on “filter failure,” or meekly accepting the worsening status quo."

tags: lean_thinking information_overload lean_management A3s filter_failure clay_shirky nathan_zeldes dan_markovitz silo disintegration fragmentation peter_drucker