Often people complain about all the useless back-to-back meetings and being copied in on hundreds of unnecessary emails, and it has got even worse.

At Enigin we value communication but communication needs to valuable – so here is advice for Enigin Distributors and Partners who are running their own energy saving businesses.

It was once believed that there’s no such thing as over-communication. Now we’d do anything to make it stop. Communication is out of control and it can take all the fun and productivity  out of work.

Yes communication is as important to business success as it used to be, but now there’s just too much of it.

For whatever reason, the new problem of hyper-collaboration, where everybody’s included in everything, can become a problem.

Whatever the reason, communication overload has reached epidemic proportions and it’s killing precious productivity and effectiveness at a time of economic strife and global competition, when our already overwhelmed and under-resourced management teams and workforces can least afford it.

Here are the first five if 10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload:

1. Every meeting – physical or virtual – must have an objective, an agenda, a start time and an end time; everybody who attends every meeting must have a specific and definitive purpose for being there.
2. Stop adding people to processes and groups. Every person you add to every process, group, communication, team, whatever, adds complexity and reduces productivity because people tend to say and do things, then others tend to respond, and so-forth. It’s always easier to herd fewer cats.
3. Question the broad use of predefined email distribution lists, reconsider every individual you cc on an email, and most importantly, don’t automatically hit “Reply to All.”
4. Reconsider internal meetings to prepare for other internal meetings, layers and layers of review meetings, the wisdom of “all hands” meetings, and panicked, kneejerk reactions to involve the whole damn world in a crisis.
5. Encourage and reward employee accountability, risk-taking, and initiative for resolving problems on their own.

In the next post there will be the final five of the 10 suggestions.