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Alarm or not doesn't really matter. If a person is receiving a signal that does not affect them most of the time they WILL start to ignore that signal. Many wil

Alarm or not doesn't really matter. If a person is receiving a signal that does not affect them most of the time they WILL start to ignore that signal. Many will attempt to combat this with policies and consequences, "Make sure your reading these e-mails, or else!" but it's a fruitless endeavor. Humans will human. Better to recognize that and build your systems around it.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
So what? If someone makes the wrong decisions because they start ignoring signals then don't promote them or give them important coordinating responsibilities. Those who are capable of filtering out a larger fraction of noise do exist. Of course there will always be folks whose preference is to read near 0% of their emails, but that doesn't imply organizations must be designed around them.
- post-it 4y ago
  Finding someone to blame doesn't matter if the company goes bust.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    It's not about playing the blame-game, it's simply to make sure the personnel in responsible positions are those who can handle it, in a verifiable on-the-record way.
- Volundr 4y ago
  > If someone makes the wrong decisions because they start ignoring signals then don't promote them or give them important coordinating responsibilities. Those who are capable of filtering out a larger fraction of noise do exist. This is simply wishful thinking. Outliers certainly exist, but the idea that there are sufficient number of them that you can just ignore human nature is a path to disaster. You'd have to somehow accurately measure not just who is opening these noisey e-mails, but what they are retaining from them, and measure it over a large period of time, knowing that the vast majority or going to fail. It's far cheaper and more reliable to fix your noisey system than to try to outwit human nature.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    > It's far cheaper and more reliable to fix your noisey system than to try to outwit human nature. Can you describe this 'cheaper and more reliable fix'?
    - Volundr 4y ago
      Yes. Make sure you are sending people notifications that are relevant to them, instead of sending all your employees the firehose and relying on them to pay close attention on the off chance something they need to know actually slips in.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Can you describe who would be responsible for deciding what to send and what is relevant?
        Volundr 4y ago
        Sure! The people administering the system define these types of rules according to the shape of your organization. It may surprise you to know this is a core feature of most change management software. It's not like "target your notifications to a specific group of users" is a novel idea.
        MichaelZuo 4y ago
        How would you envision these 'types of rules according to the shape of your organization' be set in a way that doesn't cause endless politicking and horse-trading?
        Volundr 4y ago
        By assigning them like rational human beings? It's really weird that you think you can't decide who is responsible for dealing with a type of notification ahead of time without "endless politicking and horse-trading", but think that blasting everyone with every notification, then attempting to sort out responsibility after something has gone wrong will somehow not cause "endless politicking". Again, this is something many businesses do already. They don't blast the whole company when a bank account balance is low, when a server's disk is full, etc, notifications are targeted to appropriate groups. The specifics about who gets what is going to vary based on your organization. I can't give you hard and fast rules that will work for every organization, but that doesn't mean it's somehow impossible or not worth doing.

MichaelZuo 4y ago

So what? If someone makes the wrong decisions because they start ignoring signals then don't promote them or give them important coordinating responsibilities. Those who are capable of filtering out a larger fraction of noise do exist. Of course there will always be folks whose preference is to read near 0% of their emails, but that doesn't imply organizations must be designed around them.

post-it 4y ago
Finding someone to blame doesn't matter if the company goes bust.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  It's not about playing the blame-game, it's simply to make sure the personnel in responsible positions are those who can handle it, in a verifiable on-the-record way.
Volundr 4y ago
> If someone makes the wrong decisions because they start ignoring signals then don't promote them or give them important coordinating responsibilities. Those who are capable of filtering out a larger fraction of noise do exist. This is simply wishful thinking. Outliers certainly exist, but the idea that there are sufficient number of them that you can just ignore human nature is a path to disaster. You'd have to somehow accurately measure not just who is opening these noisey e-mails, but what they are retaining from them, and measure it over a large period of time, knowing that the vast majority or going to fail. It's far cheaper and more reliable to fix your noisey system than to try to outwit human nature.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  > It's far cheaper and more reliable to fix your noisey system than to try to outwit human nature. Can you describe this 'cheaper and more reliable fix'?
  - Volundr 4y ago
    Yes. Make sure you are sending people notifications that are relevant to them, instead of sending all your employees the firehose and relying on them to pay close attention on the off chance something they need to know actually slips in.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Can you describe who would be responsible for deciding what to send and what is relevant?
      - Volundr 4y ago
        Sure! The people administering the system define these types of rules according to the shape of your organization. It may surprise you to know this is a core feature of most change management software. It's not like "target your notifications to a specific group of users" is a novel idea.
        MichaelZuo 4y ago
        How would you envision these 'types of rules according to the shape of your organization' be set in a way that doesn't cause endless politicking and horse-trading?
        Volundr 4y ago
        By assigning them like rational human beings? It's really weird that you think you can't decide who is responsible for dealing with a type of notification ahead of time without "endless politicking and horse-trading", but think that blasting everyone with every notification, then attempting to sort out responsibility after something has gone wrong will somehow not cause "endless politicking". Again, this is something many businesses do already. They don't blast the whole company when a bank account balance is low, when a server's disk is full, etc, notifications are targeted to appropriate groups. The specifics about who gets what is going to vary based on your organization. I can't give you hard and fast rules that will work for every organization, but that doesn't mean it's somehow impossible or not worth doing.