OVER-COMMUNICATION: THE CHAOTIC NOISE
Are you drowning in a sea of emails? Do you have meetings to discuss prior meetings? Is “teamwork” your mantra? Unfortunately, over-communication – sometimes referred to as the “chaotic noise” — has become a very real problem for many workers.
According to participants in an on-line survey, the average manager said they received 57 emails per day yet feel only 25 are necessary to do their job. This means that employees “write, send, read and delete over 240 million pointless emails per year.”
I think we can all agree that communication is important. However, the quality of the communication is equally important. Unfortunately, with email it’s too easy to over-communicate and lose your focus and your audience. Here are a few simple tips:
- Be succinct. Say what needs to be said, provide the information required, and that’s all. Don’t tell long tales.
- Respond only when appropriate. If you are cc’d on an email and you have no reason to respond, don’t.
- Consider whether the email you are sending even needs to be sent. Try using the phone instead.
- Remember the old concept of only touching a piece of paper once? Consider doing the same with your email. Read it and then respond, toss or create a task.
As a recruiter, one question I will often ask candidates is where they feel they waste the most time. Eight times out of 10 they will say, “in meetings.” It’s that continued desire to over-communicate.
In fact, participants in the same on-line survey said they spend more than a third of their time in meetings – more than half of which they felt they didn’t need to attend — including one of the more popular — the weekly update meeting. And a survey by Microsoft in 2004 suggests that unnecessary meetings are the number one drain on the productivity of small businesses.
If you find your team has become bogged down in meetings, consider these tips:
- Have standup meetings. By making people stand instead of sit, the meeting is more likely to end quickly.
- Have an agenda and a time limit and stick to both.
- Forget the weekly update meeting for two reasons. First, if nothing has changed there is nothing to update, so you’re wasting your time. Second, why wait until a meeting to update people on what is going on? Better to send out a more timely succinct information-filled email or voice mail.
A friend recently told me of a way her department is working to combat over-communication. They have a project board that lists all the current projects and project leaders along with a brief description of the project, milestones with completion dates and the current project status. Anyone requiring more information can just talk to the project leader. Now that’s a good way to cut down on over-communication.
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I agree that too much communication is, well, too much. Then again, there’s also the situation where there isn’t enough. When i first started my career I was so frustrated to find that NO ONE communicated. The amount of things that are done and redone because people don’t talk to each other is just as bad and unproductive as communicating too much.
The agenda is so important - having someone who is responsible for keeping the group on track is really helpful.
We schedule our meetings around 5pm - right when most of the staff is preparing to go home. People tend to be more effecient - though we have to make sure they’re alert!