Archive for August, 2011

Some powerful role modeling

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on August 25, 2011
in Organizational Solutions
. 0 Comments

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 what does he do about it? Many things, but the one I enjoyed most is this: every batch of new hires in the company goes through “New Hire Training”’, and the general manager gives the opening welcome lecture there. And at the beginning of the lecture, as the very first thing the excited new recruits hear, and from the most senior manager in the company at that, he pulls out a cellphone and asks the audience who has one. Of course they all raise their hands. He then tells them that if they expect a personally urgent message from their family or some such, they may keep the phone on and react to it when it rings by leaving the room quietly to respond. All others he asks to turn the things off – and he shows them that his own instrument is switched off as well.

Wayda go!

Now, Facebook has its medals!

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on August 15, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion and Off-topic
. 0 Comments

One common response to mention of Facebook among the Gen X and Baby Boomer (in other words, over 30) crowd is the disdainful “Why would I want people to know what I had for breakfast?!”  Use of Facebook, these people declare, is shallow and silly.

Now, it is true that many people – and not just youngsters – post to their Facebook stream rather unimportant  snippets from their daily routine; and their Friends on the service can ignore it or react to it with equally inane comments. But that’s hardly unique to Facebook; people getting together in a bar or a pub seldom pronounce earth-shaking insights either. So what’s the problem?

Which reminds me of that wonderful hobby of my youth, Amateur radio. Of course that was also about Geekdom, and homebrewing complex electronic gear; but it also involved sitting up late nights pounding at a Morse key to set up contact with like-minded “hams” from remote lands. And you know what? With few exceptions, what we discussed was our locations, antennas, weather conditions and quality of reception. Even more boring than what we had for breakfast. Yet no one criticized us as shallow or silly!

Why not? Perhaps because we had our medals, so to speak: everyone knew that radio hams were an indispensable asset to their community at times of crisis or natural disaster. Everyone knew of some ship or mountaineering expedition that was saved through a diligent amateur operator’s efforts. True, these cases were rare, but they earned our hobby respect.

And now, at last, Facebook is earning its own medals as a beneficial force in society. In the past year Facebook is increasingly seen to impact the affairs of nations; most visibly in the “Arab spring” revolutions in the Islamic world, but also in less violent situations. In Israel it is being used by the current grassroots protest movements seeking to restore sanity to food prices, increase housing availability, and revise the national priorities to focus on greater social equality and justice. Non-violent as they are, they already have a huge impact; and they all began as a call for protest in a Facebook page started by a young individual. A month later, the government is trembling in the face of the hugest demonstrations the nation has ever seen, and much hopeful change is in the air.

So… next time someone tells you that Facebook is about what one ate for breakfast, remind them that it has earned its medals, and the right to talk about breakfast if it wishes – in between overthrowing tyrants and channeling nationwide protests. Saving sinking ships is nothing in comparison!

The unsung heroes of Information Overload

Published
by
Nathan Zeldes
on August 3, 2011
in Analysis and Opinion and Organizational Solutions
. 1 Comment

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 the flood of information, and they aren’t paid to do so. I ran into one of them recently at a large Fortune 500. This guy contacted me and asked to discuss my views of email overload; of course I was happy to do so. It turned out, he told me over a cup of coffee, that he’s organizing and delivering lectures on IO that he’s developed himself, to groups of employees all over his company. It wasn’t part of his job, and he did it above his ordinary day job; indeed, given the way people are fully loaded, it probably came at the expense of his meager free time. But he was passionate about freeing his coworkers from the weight of all those countless messages of dubious value, and he went about it with great enthusiasm. He was making a difference.

What this guy was, of course, is a Grassroots Change Agent. Being a change agent is hard enough when you’re a senior engineer with the support of your management; doing it by yourself from below is outright daunting. It is also invaluable; this guy, and the other heroes like him throughout the business world, have my admiration and respect!