Information overload: Whose fault is it anyway?

Communicators tend to be creators not destroyers of information, but is there a third way?

I got thinking (rare enough) about information overload when I read someone talking about having something other than music playing when waiting for a conference call to start. A couple of years ago I may have been all for it, this sounds like a great idea and it’s not a bad one if it could be 100% related to the call about to start.

If you know anything about IBM and many corps around the world, people spend more time in conference calls than real face to face meetings, well I do anyway. Some of that time is spent listening to some damn awful muzak that gives you earache.. (which I have today but is unrelated) sometimes it can be funny too. The last thing I want at work though is more information or requests to do something when I’m trying to gather my thoughts and remember what the whole point of the meeting that is about to start is all about.

I hate that sort of thing you get when you call the insurance company, “Are you paying too much for your car insurance?” – possibly copyright of Hugh Dennis.

In the light of my last post and the feelings I had to this comment I read it seems that as communicators we are to blame for a lot of the information overload that employees feel – it’s not just all the stuff they get from each other. I feel it too but I also feel that I can cope by having the skills to find information when I need it or organising it so that others can find it too. Well that’s my perception, I could be entirely wrong.

Communicators do tend to be positive on the whole and this leads to making more of everything. We like to create things. It’s our job right, to tell people things, so we need to make something to show what we have done.  That has to change I think. We need to drive behaviours so the business succeeds financially and as a social hub – somewhere people share experiences and feel they are doing something worthwhile. If we continue to produce more stuff when can those behaviours happen? How can things get done?

Not sure I’m actually making myself clear here, this is at best a half thought through post and indeed the earache is getting painful..

Essentially I think it’s about leaving breathing space for people in your business. There is no need to fill every waking minute, blank wall or mb of hard disk space with a message. At the moment it seems that all the media that is being produced is not being consumed, rather it is consuming the people it is directed at and confusing them in the process.

It reminds me of an over enthusiastic family that all talk at the same time, mishear things and what should have been a 5 min chat ends up being an hour of getting confused and sorting that out.

Help people find information they need when they need it – this means skills and the tools must be provided.

Don’t assume because you have produced something now they need it now.. that is highly unlikely.

Related articles

• Does information overload matter? (scottberkun.com)
• Information Overload May Just Be Surplus Attention (thetylerhayes.com)

IT Blogger of the Year awards

IBM sponsored the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards which were held last night at The Delphina. Andy Piper presented the overall award which went to Project Management for Girls, which is run by Elizabeth Harrin. It won the Project Management category for the third year.

 

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How do I start blogging?

That was the question I got asked yesterday and quite often get asked.

I don’t really consider myself a blogger, not externally but I contribute to several, but I really do it to keep track of what I do and the things I like, occasionally something happens that brings in some useful insight or contact which makes it worthwhile.

But what I do know is what it is like to blog. Important to try things when you are encouraging others to see the value in social media communications.  It means you can see the pitfalls, dangers, values and surprises that these sort of things can throw up. Basically, would you take driving lessons from someone that just stood on the path telling you what to do inside the car? No.

My short summary of top tips:

It’s hard work: coming up with new things to say, finding the time and making it interesting is not easy. Very few manage it, so be realistic as to what you will get out of it. The phrase, “Just another wordpress blog” is very true.

Are you reading blogs? If not, why would you want to write one?
Even though I have this blog I found over time that through commenting
on blogs and forums I can get my point across directly to the people I
would like to reach. Also reading other blogs can give you ideas for replies to post on your own blog – referencing the original blog of course.

Write 5 blogs posts before you start to blog: Taking a page from “Groundswell” this tip is very good. If you find it hard to write 5 blogs up front, think what it will be like if you have to do it every week.

Once you start, give yourself time: Set yourself periodic reviews. See how you are going, how you feel and look at what you have written. It may be that you thought you would talk about ‘information management’ when you mainly spoke about your passion for ceramics.

Talk about the things you know: Seems simple but it’s still true. If you seem informed and passionate, your readers will also see that and your audience should grow. It will help you find your voice too – that is, writing without editing.

Set a calendar event for blogging: Put time aside to do the blogging. Make a meeting with yourself, each week to actually go through the mechanics of posting. At the start this can take a while to do, finding the links, getting used to the interface you are using and making it all look just right takes time and practice.

Make notes of your ideas: Ideas come usually when you’re not thinking actively about them. Something to do with the brain and creativity. Either use a note book, one of the many tools such as evernote that you can sync across phones and pc’s or even use a hashtag in your twitter stream to group thoughts. eg “#idea” so that you can go back and remind yourself of those inspiring moments and links.

You don’t have to do it: If after a good period of trying (six months say) it’s hard work, you don’t feel it is worth the effort, then stop. There are hundreds of blogs out there that would love a comment from you, so pack it in and check them out.

Of course these are just my thoughts and count for nothing in the whole scheme of things. Some more links below that may help you.

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About a month in

Image by kretyen via Flickr

Not much time for blogging of late, getting to know a new role can be time consuming. My afternoons are a lot busier and my morning less so, with regard to meetings. This does give me the chance to structure my work quite effectively though.

The overall culture in STG while not radically different from the rest of IBM has it’s little quirks – which does give rise to some frustration with some people – but you get that everywhere. I hope I can help in my own way, where I can to help smooth out some of those frustrations.

They say the British and Americans are two countries divided by a common language and although I have often worked with teams and individuals across the pond the regional differences in the USA are just as striking as those between Surrey and Newcastle. I’ve also been a bit “idiom blind” (if there is such a thing) in my time, so I’ve had to look up some of the phrases people are using. Sorry, but some of those I’ve just never heard before. I’m probably not cultured enough. At least now I know that making lemonade from lemons is a good thing!

Anyway, it has certainly been interesting and later next week I’m off to Manchester for the opening of a lab. We will have a few minutes from the event on Livestream, photos on Flickr and of course some tweets too.

Right, I must get a shower as I’m sat in the office in my sweaty t-shirt and shorts on what looks like a very quiet day in the office – in terms of numbers.

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Talking innovation in communications

Image via Wikipedia

Last night I did my first stand-up proper talk to non-IBMers and Brunel University to the West London Business group, with Wendy Tarr.

It was a scary thing. I’ve always been a behind the scenes person ever since school where me and a friend would always volunteer to be stagehands on the school play in September, just so we wouldn’t be cast in the actual show – and it worked.

It’s not so much  that I don’t want to be up there, although that is true too. It is the incredible nervousness I get which is uncontrollable.

As for last night, well I think I can live with myself still, haven’t been beating myself up too much about it over night. It obviously isn’t going to win any awards, but no one was throwing eggs either.  Have to say the set-up with a mic on a stand was rather annoying – it got in the way. I had no notes and couldn’t see which slides were on the screen behind me about 20 feet in the air.

I had worked out my opening. I thought, get on the right track and then roll with it. I felt I lost my way at one point, but then at another a strange sort of calm came over me. The brain is a rather crazy thing.

After Wendy had done a great presentation with her always smiling face (I probably have a look for delivering bad news) we had a Q&A session which I really enjoyed.  The question were what I expected (apart from the guy that asked what a wiki was) and I think I probably made up for the poorer performance on my talk. We even had an ex-IBMer there who had worked in IBM for 10 years and said it was the best place he had ever been. He wasn’t a plant, never seen him before, honest, guv.

When we arrived, the guy that was running it, John Bolt, said, “So you guys must go around on the circuit doing this sort of thing all the time, where else have you been?” We both looked at each other and smiled.

After, we grabbed some food (was I hungry now) and a few people came over and started asking questions. It was really nice and everyone was so polite, handed us cards, we apologised for not having any but by this time we had already said, “Google us.”

So what came out of the evening? Well we talked about Jams quite a bit. One of the Uni guys wants to do something with IBM on a Jam. People were amazed at out “lack of policing” the social web and how we encourage people to be brand ambassadors. There was also a perception that IBM is very big brother in the meetings we run, thinking that every recording from a meeting is sent to HQ for someone to vet it. We certainly put them straight on that.

What is obvious is that the fear of getting social on the web is outweighing the benefits it can bring to a collaborative way of working in an ever increasing global economy. Perhaps through necessity we have found that it does work, with the right culture, management and values in place.

Many thanks to John and all the people at West London Business and Brunel University for asking me and Wendy along.

And of course, big thanks to Wendy. It was great working on this with her.

How to behave at work

Image by itatton via Flickr

Do you know how to behave at work? Common-sense right?

Someone once said, “Common-sense is anything but common.” Answers on a postcard please.

Those of you on twitter will have seen a number of people mentioning that they have completed their BCG. This is not an injection. This is education, a reminder, a nudge. This is Business Conduct Guidelines. This is the heavy heavy monster sound. (sorry I had to)

“The guidelines provide general guidance for resolving a variety of legal and ethical questions for employees of IBM, including its subsidiaries and affiliates. These guidelines clarify long-standing expectations of how members of IBM’s worldwide community will conduct themselves in their business activities.”

If we step back and look at what happens in many companies and I’ll take those of my family and friends. Management is constantly “reminding people” through emails, meetings and memos, “can people please refrain from doing x,y and z while at work.” This is time consuming. This distracts people from work, from being productive and it demotivates people.

Actions of a small minority end up punishing the majority and as a result things seem a lot worse than they really are. I know, I get the phone calls.

When I joined IBM I was given a huge folder of stuff, I mean massive. We have the web now so thankfully all that has changed but within that pile were the BCGs.  Reading them I was a little terrified to be honest. “Never had anything like this before!” I thought.

But after a while you realise this is good. It means you have a definitive (well almost) answer to situations you may face. Some are more complex than you may imagine and I couldn’t imagine most of the scenarios in the education videos.

The BCGs draw a line in the sand, they tell you what is acceptable – actually they go further than that I would say, they tell you what is expected, what is the right thing to do.

Based around our company values the BCGs have also help IBM become more active in social media (did you wonder when I would mention that?) of which the social computing guidelines are a subsection. This year we also saw a section in the education module related just to social media.

To sum up, in my mind, the BCGs form the basis of what we do. They provide that common-sense, the line in the sand, the common ground from where we all start. If someone goes beyond those then the majority doesn’t get punished, the individual does and they can’t say they hadn’t been told.

Stuff I’m doing today

No idea why you would be interested but this is what I’m doing/done today.

• Created some graphics for an intranet page
• Plan and organise a bunch of execs to record in a podcast
• Set-up a briefing with other comms people in the business to make them aware of an event
• EcoJamming
• Design a poster
• w3 editors meeting “special edition”
• Thinking about what to talk about for 10 mins on the subject of “Interactive Information systems we use to communicate internally & with clients” Wendy Tarr is doing the bit on clients

But now, I must get a coffee.

Internal communications, social media & IBM

Thanks to Mark Hillary for taking this video of me in IBM South Bank a week ago for his new blog, The SocialITe, for ComputerWeekly.com.

I have to say it is odd being on the other side of the camera, I’ve stuck a few cameras and mics in front of people in my time but also well aware how hard it is to be the subject. As a kid I never liked my photo being taken, unlike my kids that seem to love it.

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Mixing communications works

The fruit of a number of months hard work ripened in South Bank this week as we held the launch of the IBM London Analytics Solution Centre.

London Analytics Solution Centre Launch

From my point of view I was involved in the internal comms and social media side (internal and external). It was possibly a first chance to work more with local teams than world wide teams for some of the chairman events I’ve been luck enough to work on in the past.

(press release)

With a smaller (although still big), more local team it enables you to have a bit more sway over what happens.  But the experience I’ve gained from events in Turkey, Berlin and London have been incredibly useful to bring to the table.

It may seem odd but risk taking at a local level (country level) is not viewed as a good thing. It is seen in a single light of being risk, rather than balancing that with the opportunity that comes along. To an extent this is determined by experience on the ground, being comfortable that you can deal with what will come up and also not worrying that someone will shout at you.

The biggest perceived risk from this event was the livestreaming of video from the event. Not something we have done in the UK or possibly outside of the US Armonk events. Most people were a bit worried about what could happen in the room and having that streamed over the Internet.  My biggest worry was that the technology would fail (not that there is anything wrong with Livestream.com – I just worry about it) or that no-one would bother to watch. So we were coming from very different places.

In the end everything worked out great. We have had over 2000 people see the live and recorded video stream – which is now available on demand from our video studio.

Not sure I was making too many friends when I was pushing for this to remain available for external viewing but I had some great support from of all groups our press relations team. All quite clear that the risk was negligible. People used to getting difficult questions can answer difficult questions.

My comms plan

So being able to co-ordinate between the internal and external social media side of things gives you a great view of how it all links up. Sitting in the same office as the pr team also helps to keep in touch with how situations develop.

From a couple of weeks out we started talking about why analytics is important and the new centre, with article on w3 (our intranet) including videos helping people to understand the basics, which were animations with voice-over.

The week before we had an article that was supported by quotes from our Chief Exec. Brendon Riley.

From then on we ramped up the beat. Another article few days before with full details of what, where & when – with plenty on how to get involved at many levels.

The day before we sent all employees an email with a video from Brendon outlining details again, linking back the previous article, which consisted of a group of pages with information segregated for easy consumption.

Many of the items such as video and feeds could be embedded into peoples own blogs or wikis.

This was linked together with Twitter #ibmbao to enable to bring together internal and external parties to start talking, help with promotion and keep people up to date with the latest news, not to mention photos which we posted on Flickr.

BTW, the live event was streamed to all our locations via our InSite TV along with the feed from Twitter.

We also made use of asmarterplanet.com blog and our smarterplanet tumblr.

It’s important to get employees and external parties in the same space for events like this and to do it as soon as possible. As well as to try all avenues of reaching people.

Results

• So from a first look we see over 2,000 livestream video views in first 24 hours
• over 8000 page views on w3 so far
• 91 short of 6,000 video downloads of Brendon (as I speak)
• Almost 5,000 image views on Flickr
• IBMer Day we had a very busy demo hall (awaiting numbers)

I think there is still more data to gather, we also have provided all employees with a post-event article, bringing together the main points and sources of information, both internal and external, for them to explore, bookmark (in Lotus Connections) and refer to in the future.

Overall a great event I think and I was very pleased to play a small role in it. When’s the next one?

There is probably a lot I’ve missed but it is Friday…and this is only a blog.

*** Update ***

Just seen we have now had over 3,000 views of the recorded video.

What about permission?

Note to reader: I left at 1pm as I had another engagement so I don’t know what happened in the second half. Do tell if you know.

At an event yesterday organised by The Alternative in deepest Soho I was annoyed to discover that the place had no wireless access and my 3G card didn’t work as we were in the basement. Avery nice basement but nonetheless reception was rubbish.

tribe - Projeto Salamandra

The event was entitled “The New Brand Tribalism” and not being able to pump up my pc to tweet and share with the world what was going on was incredibly annoying. My tribal behaviour towards this brand was no off to a good start.

Note to all event organisers, wireless is as much an essential these days as tea and coffee.

My initial thought before going to this event were that I wonder how much people like Seth Godin and a whole host of others would come up. Not once unless I fell asleep.  Seth has his critics and I’m no fan-boy but c’mon, give a word for those that came before.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I didn’t feel that there was anything “new” here. Lots of talk of being authentic but the also more on being controlling. To my mind that sounded like, try and look like you are authentic. Kind of the opposite of being authentic. I was expecting more about giving employees brand permission, about employees being involved in the decisions that matter to them, the stuff that makes me come to work.

There were some mentions of brand ambassadors but it felt like that some gimmick or other had to be run so as employees would then go and talk about it. Quick fixes fade quick too.

Actually one statement that stuck in my mind went something like, ” We can take the tribal behaviours and control and shape them for the business.” To me that sounds like they way you kill it.

Great chats though with a couple of gents, those were insightful conversations on what is really happening, success and failures, fear and desire.  Wish I also got to meet Joanne and Rach who also attended.

Left a bit, right a bit, up, up, just there..nice.

The other day I mentioned at the end of a rather long and tiresome bleat about social media and internal communications that one of IBM’s biggest assets in this area after our culture is the social computing guidelines.

what?

Now you can watch this video (link on the right of the page) that Global Social Media Comms Manager and Power Lunch botherer @adamclyde made about this very subject during his lunch break with our VP, Security Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Harriet Pearson (honestly don’t know if she is on Twitter).

If you are wondering what the music is, it’s an updated version of the IBM anthem, which we are all forced to sing and dance to when we get to the office.

Please note what we think differentiates IBM from our competitors, us, the IBMers, because that is how people experience the IBM brand.

And for that matter, your brand too.

Adam is available for birthday parties where tacos are served.

Connecting ourselves

Not written much here for a while, the odd link and video but this has been because I’ve been on holiday and also busy with a series of projects and activities at work that are just taking more and more time.

"Miles of files" drpritch

But I’m not neglecting my blogging entirely, in fact I’ve been blogging more internally as that is where, right now I need to focus.

I get a bit bored and confused when companies and especially Internal Comms folk start saying that they are using social media for Internal Communications.  To me it sounds like they have got the CEO to “write” a blog or get some “safe” employees to write. That misses the point. Sometimes though it means they have a “Facebook-like” system, which if they are really lucky turns out to be employee profiles, often several versions, none of which can be connected to any other applications running in the enterprise, hence making them nothing more than a time-sink.

I would hope Internal Comms is help employees to use social media to work better with each other.. not just utilise it as another “channel” which is fast rising on my list of Top ten twenty thirty most hated words or phrases – along with stakeholder.

How many have email clients, profiles, blogs, forums and micro-blogging integrated into an enterprise-wide platform for social media and a policy that encourages and enables employees to get stuck in (even if we do still have a fair few lagards)?

Even then it’s not the end of the story. Tools and policy are one thing (two I suppose) but a culture that is open, honest and trusting is needed to take advantage of those opportunities, not to mention motivated and questioning employees, part of which is grown out of the trust  that is displayed in behaviour by management (no one is perfect but things are relative) that means people take their responsibility as brand ambassadors seriously.  Quick note on brand ambassadors, your employees are whether you like it or not, for good or bad.. just try to make it good, eh? Get ’em to make videos like KFC not Dominoes.

So back to what I was orginaly waffling on about which was a number of projects that I have been involved in. Working with a variety of people with different expectations and practices can get a bit perplexing at times, especially when you are sent 6mb after 6mb file. I’m by no means anti-email like some but I can see better ways of using it rather than being the default for all chat at work.

So I’ve been encouraging some people to get it on with Files on Lotus Connections (we have 2.5 deployed internally). This is made much easier by showing them the time and effort it saves, using other projects as examples.

I’m lucky enough to work with a bunch of people that are mostly pretty good at using things the right way (that is my way) instead of one tool for all jobs. Explaining how a file we were updating on an employee engagement package was being updated and handled between a bunch of us – then showing how Files kept the previous versions (so you don’t have to – as the advert says) went down a treat. Not only that but we could assign each person with certain level of access, and keep changing that level when we jolly well felt like it.

I could then bore you with the amount of time, (sending emails) money (sending emails to people with large attachments that never open them but leave them in their mail file, just in case) and more money (those attachments keep building up with each wave of emails) and confusion (because you all know which file is the right file – the one in Files) you save, but I won’t.

Don’t knock at the door, I’m out

What I have noticed more and more these days is how much time I spend in Lotus Connections rather than my email and how while I was away for a few days recently my status updates came in useful for people. I now not only leave an “out of office” message in Notes but in all my status points. This firstly cut down on un-required email as more people knew I was away before they sent me the damn thing. Secondly the updates that I had been posting related to things that I was working on, intranet pages, files, video etc.. links where people could find what they were looking for.. this useless track of information I had left behind which also included how wet I got on the way to work while cycling actually came in useful for some of the very people that say they don’t have time for such things.

To quote someone more sensible than me, “With social media, forget about the media and concentrate on the social.”

I’m afraid if I get the energy I’ll more rants coming your way too.. must be something to do with the clocks going back or something or my recent discovery and move to Ubuntu Linux. So I might also change my name to Karmic Karl in future.