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PART ONE: PROBLEM

PART ONE

There is a problem we are all facing, and it’s sneaky and subtle and hard to see, even though it’s right in front of our faces. The problem is information and its effect on how we communicate and how we live.

You have heard this before. Many pundits, from Neil Postman to Richard Saul Wurman and even Ted Koppel, have decried “information overload”—how technology and media saturation continue to fill every crack and crevice of time, and how it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what is truly important in our communications. They have pointed our ever-diminishing attention span to how our access to, and facileness with, information has increasingly segmented our time into smaller and smaller pieces. Our lives (and even our children’s lives) and our work are overly scheduled and fragmented.

I want to begin this book with a clear definition of the problem that leaders face as we try to lead people and organizations effectively. As leaders, we need to be cognizant of this problem because it is something with which we are all grappling. And because how we manage information has a profound impact on how we communicate, plan for, and reach our goals, we need to be prepared to be part of the solution.

But it’s only until we understand the situation we are in, that we can begin to look at it differently. We are surrounded—literally—by a never-ending stream of information. Increasingly, it will be our ability to manage this constant information flow and to make meaning out of these fragments that will allow us to be successful in the near future. And the near future is today.