Janet Johnson | The Art of Marketing

My buddy Scott over at Attensa sent me a couple of nuggets from a 2005 IDC report entitled “The Hidden Cost of Information Work” that didn’t surprise me in the least; except for the sheer dollar costs associated to lost productivity around sharing and collaboration on documents.

“….an organization employing 1,000 knowledge workers loses $5.7 million annually just in the time wasted by employees having to reformat information as they move among applications.”

“Not finding information costs that same organization an additional $5.3 million a year.”

“….Collaborative tasks such as review and approval have 4.3 hours of management overhead (manage document approval) on top of the 8.3 hours of editing and reviewing that information workers do. Managing document routing consumes 4 hours.”

Not surprisingly, the report was commissioned by a document management and CMS provider who, at the time, charged hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase and install a system that only a few, enlightened people (read: they were comfortable with both HTML and business processes) could use.

Fast forward two short years:

True collaboration tools are inexpensive, intuitive and easy to use. Now our challenge is to convince those running large, (generally hierarchical) enterprises to empower their employees to do so; using (very scary, ‘loosey goosey,’ hard to control - I mean, lock down) collaboration and social networking tools.

In a fascinating post on hierarchies and enterprise 2.0, Anne Truitt Zelenka wrote that leaders in organizations must:

“Allow for social problem-solving across these informal, ad hoc relationships, perhaps supported by decentralized knowledge sharing and aggregation applications including wikis, blogs, and informal broadcast communications similar to Twitter.

When I was at Oracle (which experience gave me both firsthand knowledge of how big companies work and an understanding of the difficulties of enterprise application development), I saw that the most effective employees were not those who only worked using the formal organizational hierarchy but were those who both respected the hierarchy and were able to tap into a rich set of informal relationships that crossed hierarchical lines.

The hierarchy doesn’t need to be entirely subverted, but needs to be complemented with social problem-solving across informal networks. This is where Enterprise 2.0 comes in.”

Go ahead. Let’s subvert the dominant paradigm. It’s costing us a ton of money - any way you look at it - not to.

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Fabulous post over at MarketingSherpa today on how to format email to be read on a Blackberry, the PDA of choice for business users.  It’s open until August 1, so that’s six quick days to get over and read it.  Go!

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I love the idea of distractions because I believe they ultimately feed the creative process. But I never want to be accused of succumbing to them while focusing my attention on trying to get to a point (physically, mentally or verbally), or even to get a point across in reading, writing or speaking. As I’ve recently discovered, my continuous partial attention has been an Achilles heel, and I’m just starting to realize the consequences.

In 1890, William James explained attention this way:

“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.” Thank you, Wikipedia.

This morning I found a great post on multitasking from Anne Truitt Zelenka, one of the bloggers to whom I subscribe via RSS (learn more here). In it, she notes:

“In connected mode, you stay in near-constant touch with colleagues and maintain a broad awareness of what’s available online. You accept multitasking as a fact of at least part of your work life. It’s not necessarily a substitute for single-tasking and dedicated focus, but can be a good complement if you know when and how to use it.”

Therein lies the rub - if you know when and how to use it. As Anne points out, most knowledge workers are in the same boat - multitasking and constant interruptions are a way of life. She cites a study done by Microsoft Research (Tara Matthews et. al.); in it they noted:

“We believe that providing relevant task information in a glanceable, low-attention manner is critical to solving these multitasking problems.”

Ahh… perfect case for subscribing to information, and having it delivered in a low-attention, glanceable manner into a familiar tool - in my case, my Outlook inbox.

I am now free to pay attention or be distracted (my choice of mode) while still being efficient with my tasks. Using the RSS platform from Attensa, I’m able to react quickly to information and

• read it
• share it - by posting or forwarding to my collaboration sites
• blog it

immediately, without leaving Outlook. That’s the kind of distraction that can hold my attention - long enough to make it really useful.

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At dinner last night we were talking about Harry Potter, and how the most popular searches on Technorati this weekend were “Harry Potter” and “Harry Potter spoiler.” My sweet wanted to read what other grownups were feeling about the book, now that she’d finished it. But every search she tried was turning up nothing of value, and wondered why…

I told her I believe most people who blog would love to engage in conversations around interesting subjects (like Harry Potter, and how I feel as a 40 year old or 50 year old adult when I’ve finished it), but have no clue how to be found. Of course, she said, why don’t you blog about that?

So here I am, blogging about the importance of relevant keywords, using Harry Potter and post-partum depression as bait…

Go figure.

Why did I title this post Harry Potter and post-partum depression? Because that’s the feeling I’ll bet thousands of women are feeling once they’ve finished the series. “It’s over… now what do I do?” If they had blogs, and would just tag their Harry Potter blog posts with appropriate keywords that are descriptive, they might have their posts found by others.

And Harry Potter and post-partum depression is pretty descriptive! If I were going to search for other grown up women who’ve finished Harry Potter, what would I type into my search engine?

• Harry Potter post-partum depression (screens to adult female readers immediately)
• Finished Harry Potter depressed (screens likely to mature readers who may or may not have liked the ending)
• Harry Potter blog posts (doesn’t really screen at all, except maybe to discussions on blogs like this one)

Every time you blog, think about the readers you’d like to attract. And use your words carefully to attract them. You’ll be amazed at the results.

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Let’s be careful where we’re heading. In 1974 Pong was introduced and ushered in the “digital natives” era. Thirty three years later, we have complete information overload and the iPhone, the coolest new tool for complete accessibility available. Information is being kicked out more easily than it is being assimilated and even understood.

Which begs the questions: how much information can people handle, and is it all really necessary?

According to a February report by Basex called Information Overload,We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us, anyone born in the past 33 years is capable of multitasking quite naturally, whereas those of us who are older must learn to do so - we don’t have such a propensity for handling multiple IM sessions or Twittering while on conference calls.

As my yoga teacher revealed today, ’some people are wired for movement, some are wired for stillness.’ She was talking about meditation though I believe it applies here.

Changing the way we think about knowledge and information

According to the US Department of Commerce, the Knowledge economy overtook the Industrial economy in late 1999, and unskilled labor now makes up only 20% of the work force vs. more than 90% at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Knowledge workers have changed a lot over the years - as is evidenced by the language we speak and the tools we use. I am reminded, as I write about collaboration tools and read about fabulous implementations of cool knowledge management tools, of the importance of taking a step back and remembering: we’re all writing for (and speaking to) people who have different ways of assimilating information.

• I’m comfortable writing publicly and in email, use RSS, hate the phone (but love my Blackberry), and don’t like to print things.
• Dan won’t make a presentation using a PC. He likes to be able to write on a nicely bound PowerPoint presentation when in front of clients.
• Johnny carries his laptop everywhere as well as his PDA, loves Twitter, Facebook and iPTV.

A danger of too much information, too, is that everything is equally urgent and needs my attention now. I am guilty of that in spades.

What gets neglected? Usually the (most important) people who quietly live their lives around mine, and don’t flash on my screen (they’re relegated to ‘wallpaper’ - really??) or ring in my ear or comment on my blog.

Even coolest iPhone application will never have arms that would willingly wrap themselves around my shoulders…

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