Or, “A Twelve Step Program For Identifying and Eliminating Organizational Change“.
I loved this article. It’s against everything my degree program tries to foster in its students. So of course I think it should be required reading
Feb 022005
Yesterday a colleague asked me why I was teaching him about RSS. He thought it was cool, but didn’t think it was my job to introduce employees to new technology. He right — on paper my job is to manage a public web site. However, my job as I choose to define it is to offer as many options for content delivery as possible. In order to do that, I need to have intelligent conversations with people about those options. I can’t be the only one in my organization who uses RSS or thinks about its possibilities.
I thought it was an obvious answer, but he seemed astonished. *sigh*
Jan 312005
My team of merry cohorts and I have been exposing to our co-workers to the world of RSS. We’ve provided an overview of RSS, an introduction to Bloglines and a starter set of feeds. People have promised to give it a try for a month or so and provide feedback to us. All well and good.
However, one of my team members felt that RSS gives people too much information, and was concerned about information overload impacting work productivity. She felt we can’t expect people to be productive when they have so much content and so many options. I can’t entirely disagree, so I was wondering, should we expose people to more than a new tool? Should we also provide them with a defense against information overload? And what would that defense look like?
We knocked out a few strategies:
Suggest Hard Limits
If you have only a few feeds, it’s hard to get overwhelmed by them. People know when they’re feeling pressure. Have them cut back the number of feeds if this happens.
Use “Mark All Read”
If you have trouble keeping up, periodically mark all of your new feeds as read. You’ll miss things, but the pressure will go away.
Limit Your Visits
Only go to your Bloglines account once or twice a day. Impose a time limit.
Adjust The Mix
This will take the most self-knowledge (knowing what links you value and why) and work (judicious pruning of links that don’t add value or only provide only an echo chamber effect), but will provide the best RSS experience. I think this is the best solution because you can also account for e-mail and other sources. The down side is people don’t like to work for quality content. *sigh*
Personally, I don’t think that RSS is the cause of information overload (e-mail can be just as bad). This tool has arrived at a time when information is more readily available, that’s all. I still intend to post on what my “mix” of information is and why I think it works for me. People won’t be able to use exactly what I have, but it may help them in building a workable defense against the glut of content.
As always, I’m interested in your strategies. Don’t be shy…
Follow me on Twitter 
