Jonathan B. Spira's Blog: Overload Stories, page 21
July 21, 2011
Churchill Club
Churchilll Club at Morrison & Foerster LLP
Silicon Valley, CA
July 27, 2011
7:30 A.M. registration
8:00 A.M. start
Speakers: Derek Dean, Partner, The Exetor Group
Jonathan Spira, CEO and Chief Analyst, Basex, Inc.
Moderator: David Needle, Silicon Valley Journalist & Blogger
The ever-expanding "infoglut" is threatening knowledge worker productivity as never before. How do we prevent so-called, "real-time" information streams, multitasking and social media distractions from hampering our ability to innovate and produce? Join Jonathan Spira, Basex research analyst and author of the new book, Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization, and Derek Dean, Exetor Group partner and coauthor of the recent McKinsey report, Recovering from Information Overload, for an insightful conversation about new technologies and techniques to turn the infoglut to infogold. Moderated by well-known Silicon Valley tech journalist David Needle.
Guest Lecture at University of California, Berkeley
Guest Lecture at University of California, Berkeley
July 25, 2011
10:30 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.
Details to be announced.
Google Book Talk
Google Book Talk
Silicon Valley
July 26, 2011
11 A.M.
Details to be announced.
Venture Capital Task Force
Venture Capital Task Force
Silicon Valley
July 27, 2011
4 P.M.
Details to be announced.
July 19, 2011
What did I miss…
What do I miss throughout the day? To tell you the truth, I couldn't begin to tell you. As an executive at a pharma company, I'm bombarded by e-mails and instant messages all day. Since part of my responsibilities include social media, that opens up yet another Pandora's box of information overload as well. And then there are texts and phone calls and cellphones… it never ends.
By the time the workday is over (which is usually when I am in bed reading e-mail on my smartphone), I have no idea if I missed anything important. I care, of course, but the volume is such that it's inevitable that I will miss a bunch of minor notes and hopefully nothing major. I count on people to mark things important (!) if they are – but that's wishful thinking I suppose.
This happens day in and day out. And it's not just me. My friends and colleagues tell me similar stories (I should tell them to post them here I suppose but they are so overloaded they might not see my note).
Wayne Turmel: 10 Tips for Easing Information Overload
BNET Connected Manager: 10 Tips for Easing Information Overload
Wayne Turmel
July 18, 2011
As managers, you're always told to communicate. But for many of us the problem isn't not enough information, it's too much. Handling all the email, messages, memos and stuff coming at us is like trying to drink from a fire hose. Here are some tips for getting a grip.
In his new book "Overload-How Too Much Information is Hazardous to Your Organization", author Jonathan Spira says it's not just personal productivity that suffers. Too much information to handle effectively costs the US economy $900 Billion a year in bad decisions, delays and wasted time.
Full blog post available here.
The Cranky Middle Manager Show: Handling Information Overload with Jonathan Spira
The Cranky Middle Manager Show #289 Handling Information Overload with Jonathan Spira
July 16, 2011
Today Wayne Turmel talks to author Jonathan Spira about his book , "Overload! How Too Much Information is Hurting Your Organization". Hopefully we'll give you just the right amount of detail. Also we talk sifting through too many gospels and a little poetry to bemoan your email load. Never say we ain't classy.
Full interview podcast can be found here.
WriterViews: Lauren Tower Barnes interviews Jonathan Spira
WriterViews: Lauren Tower Barnes interviews Jonathan Spira
July 8, 2011
Basex Cheif Analyst Jonathan Spira is on a mission: simply put, Spira is out to beat the epidemic of information overload. According to Spira's research, about eight man hours are lost for every hundred recipients included on an unnecessary mass email. Even worse, some researchers suggest that our newfound tendency towards shorter and shorter forms of communication is causing people's attention spans to shorten over time.
Spira encountered the problem of information overload while writing his book, Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization. In this interview he tells us how he dealt with that issue and provides tips for better email communication, better writing in general and for limiting the amount of "stuff" we allow to fill our brains and soak up time that could be better spent.
You can learn more about Basex and Jonathan Spira at his website www.overloadstories.com, where you'll also find stories as a continuation of the book.
To learn more about Spira's book, visit the trailer here.
Full interview can be found here.
July 14, 2011
Guest column: Will Banning PowerPoint Save the Knowledge Worker?
Although the impact of a tool is in large part determined by the way it is used, 
there are certain tools that by their very design can have a negative impact on productivity.
PowerPoint, a familiar tool to all knowledge workers, has attracted a large number of detractors over the years. As the go-to business presentation tool, it is ubiquitous and almost a requirement in formal business interactions to present a slide deck with the requisite company information, colorful collection of company logos slides, series of bullet points, a few quotes, some charts, and although this thankfully seems to have fallen out of fashion, perhaps a clever animation of some sort.
Unfortunately, the metaphor of a PowerPoint presentation, that is, a linear progression of high-level talking points, is not necessarily well suited for knowledge work. Over a year ago, in April of 2010, The New York Times spoke with several military officers who blamed the tool for oversimplifying issues and fostering the illusion that people understand complex problems when they actually don't. General James N. Mattis, U.S. Marine Corps, did not mince words when he said that "PowerPoint makes us stupid".
The gist of the comments by military commanders in the New York Times piece was that creating the massive amount of PowerPoint slides that have become overly time-intensive and that "the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision making."
Taking the criticism of PowerPoint one step further, the Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP) in Switzerland has recently called for a referendum on banning the use of the tool for presentations, instead advocating the use of the time-tested paper flip chart. The group claims that the use of PowerPoint costs the Swiss economy 1.2 billion Swiss Francs, or $2.5 billion. The estimated cost is based on a series of assumptions that range from the somewhat logical, that 11% of the country's 4.1 million employees participate in PowerPoint presentations twice a week on average, and that the average number of participants is 10, to the slightly less-logical, that 85% of participants find the presentations "are killing motivation." (To the APPP's credit, they are very clear that they are operating on assumptions, not hard data.)
Despite the fuzzy estimation of the APPP's economic impact, it is refreshing to see an attempt to critically examine the financial impact of a specific tool. Through extensive surveying, our research at Basex has revealed the overall cost of Information Overload to the U.S. economy in 2010 to be nearly $1 trillion. We have not looked yet at the specific cost of individual tools in that figure because we believe that the problem is a confluence of multiple factors, although isolating the cost at the tool level is an intriguing avenue of research.
While the APPP's approach is a bit extreme, we do believe that the actions of individual knowledge workers can make a huge impact in reducing Information Overload. An outright ban on PowerPoint is draconian and an overreaction to say the least. However, if the proposed referendum spurs discussion and a reevaluation of the use of that tool, then there may be a positive impact on reducing Information Overload and increasing knowledge worker productivity. We all no doubt would be happy to sit through even one fewer PowerPoint presentation.
Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.
