Whenever I read summaries of innovation / idea gathering / open space / freeflow meetings, I find at least one person’s idea to have “less e-mail”. Usually right next to “more budget”, and equally realistic.

We live in times which confront us with a lot of information. It’s the price we pay for having all the information we want at our fingertips, around the clock. There is no going back to “less information”. Get used to it.

Not that I think that it’s easy to deal with all the e-mails we get – but we should not spend energy chasing the romantic ghost of ye glory days with less info, but on finding ways how to better process it. I’m convinced that while the burden of processing on the individual grows, there will be new service providers emerging that help people to deal with it; automatic agents, intuitive self-management systems, outsourcing – the elements are already here, but the idea cluster hasn’t reached critical mass yet.

Power of the Subject Line, Baby!
And while I’m waiting for the next App-That-Will-Save-Us-All(tm), I’ve started to make my e-mails more readable. Specifically, over the last month, I’ve consequently summarized what I want from my e-mail reader into my subject line:

• Subject: “1:1 meeting – can’t make 15h today”
• Subject: “Recruitment Ranges: Master Sheet now displays overview – pls check if something is missing”
• Subject: “Job Families: Position not approved; please call Peter to discuss”
• Subject: “Any news on the role profiles we discussed?”

I have the impression that since I’m doing this, I’ve been getting quicker responses from my contacts – probably because the subject line in the inbox unmistakeably states what I want, and doesn’t allow for any “I didn’t have time to read this yet” excuses. It’s also a good exercise in understanding what you want yourself.

The Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco once wrote an excellent satirical essay called “The Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1:1″, in which he discusses various (quite funny) approaches of how to create a map of a fictional empire that maps everything, everywhere, in real-time and in real-size. The essay shows that it is totally absurd to try to map anything on a 1:1 scale: That would re-create reality, and defy a map’s central purpose: Simplification.

We talk a lot about simplification: “How can we make things easier, i.e. less complex?”. If that’s not possible, the question shifts towards integration: “How can we oversee and understand complex matters?”. Out of this question rises the need for process maps and flowcharts, information and reporting systems, KPIs and scorecards.

The constant, yet often overseen dilemma in all of those integration approaches is the fact that every integration of complexity has to lose some of its information. There’s no way around it: You can’t make a PowerPoint slide simpler by just reducing the font size. And the more unimportant information you delete (=integrate), the likelier the chance that you will lose real important information. On the other side, however, is that keeping ALL of the information is not only hard to digest (=complex), but also costly to maintain.

In other words: The devil is really in the details. The ones you keep, and the ones you delete.

So next time you want to create a system to integrate your data, map your processes, summarize your information, and feel it just doesn’t contain the level of detail you want – ask yourself: Wouldn’t it be easier to put away the map, and take a look at reality itself?

There are boring, unpleasant tasks in almost every job. At the core of their boringness lies the repetition of small, intellectually modest actions packages – i.e. doing the same no-brainer routine over and over.

How unpleasant these tasks are is moderated by two factors: 1) The number of steps required to complete one package: A task that takes just three steps (read something, find data entry field, type it) will be more pleasant than a task that takes five (read something, read something else, compare the two, find data entry field, type the result). 2) the level of quality required: A boring task that will have negative consequences if you make mistakes will be more unpleasant than one where mistakes are forgiven.

In my experience, you can get overproportional gains in speed and, to some extent, quality, if these tasks are worked at in teams of two – the kind of gains where combined effort is more than the sum is of its parts. These overproportional gains can be explained by the reduction of action steps (A reads, B types – no need to find the data entry field every time), speed-up effects (type in numbers for 10 minutes – your speed will steadily rise to your maximum if you’re not interrupted), as well as increased motivation of the actors.

I think we make far too little use of these team-effects. Mundane tasks are usually delegated to one person only – not two; and after they have been delegated to a single person, it is difficult for the delegatee to find a willing partner.

Now let me get back to those 102 numbers I need to look up and feed into a spreadsheet. Sigh.

In German there is a saying “The shoemaker’s children go barefeet”, which is used to describe a situation where the knowledge and skills in customer relations is not applied as well internally as they are externally.

For example, how well are Finance departments setting up their own budgets? How good are purchasing departments at finding the best rates for their own purchases? Do IT departments have great, bug-free internal systems? How good a job are HR departments doing at hiring, developing and retaining their own people? And do employees in communications departments understand their own strategy?

For some of those questions, the idiom seems to apply – for others, it doesn’t. My gut feeling tells me there could be a systemic bias leading to such a effects: Resources used for external (and defined) purposes can be justified and will probably get incentivized, whereas the same resources won’t and can’t. Furthermore, there might be the perception that the core business of a department would need less to no effort if it is applied to itself, which is why proper planning and execution might be neglected.

Supposed the idiom would be correct, such a bias would probably have different effects on different departments. For example, a purchasing department ordering paper at a unfavorable price or a would be less problematic than a medical service unable to detect a disease in their own staff.

Anyway, I’ve never seen any research on this subject – how about you?