Communicate less

Communication, communication, communication. That seems to be the mantra when it comes to good team management, successful organizational change and the much sought-after collaboration. Tools from emails to wikis, Skype to Twitter are enabling communication everywhere, anytime at low cost. – But if you get the idea that communication should flow continuously, you are in danger of receiving perpetual, ubiquitous chatter (i.e. noise) instead of high-quality interaction. Communication should come in small, efficient dosages. And just as “slow food” or “slow transport” are supposed to bring quality back into our eating and travel habits, “slow communication” could raise the productivity at work - and even the indulgence in work!

Slow communication – some fragments

• Switch out: 37signals, the web2.0 company behind popular collaboration tools like basecamp and campfire advises “alone time” of uninterrupted work as the means to safeguard productivity (see their publication Getting Real). E.g. no telephone and email between 9.00 and 14.00. Some companies like U.S. Cellular try to solve the problem by introducing zero-email-days (see this article at USAToday.)
• Opportunities: Michael Arrington, famous Techcrunch blogger complained he received more than 2000 emails a day – and he saw this as a business opportunity: “The long term answer is that someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages. If I knew what that solution was, I’d quit this blog and go do it.” Yes, there is money to be made and some already do it – like Timothy Ferris, whose book The 4-Hour-Workweek became a hot selling item at Amazon – he also advised to radically cut down inefficient communication.
• Meetings: One way to achieve this is spending less time with meetings. The FT recently gave the anti-meeting movement some space: “If three people meet in a corridor and discuss a project for five minutes, they have had a meeting, and probably an effective one. But most meetings are seen as immovable blocks in diaries.” Bill Daniels, chief executive of American Consulting & Training is quoted with views on the cost-side of meetings: "[Some] meetings are very expensive. Not only do you have all the people in the room, but for every hour you spend in the meeting, there's five to 10 hours getting ready.” Nevertheless, he also says that meetings are needed to build teamwork.

Helping employees avoid inefficient communication should be in the interest of every company (inefficient meetings are not just expensive and unproductive but also never climate friendly!) and therefore a management topic. But still, everyone probably needs to find their own individual balance between too much and too little. I personally find lack of communication much more frustrating than communication overkill, which at least gives me a chance to pull the plug.