MScom Alumni Association

Preparing Messages for Information Overload Environments

„Let’s be part of the solution, not the problem”, invited MScom Alumni Association president Martin Fricker over 40 alumnis and prospects in his welcome address. In his discourse, Martin J. Eppler, full professor of media and communication management at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) explained, how communication professionals can be part of the solution. The problem is known: 50 new messages in the e-mail box, four reports that demand attention, a new intranet section to review, interesting websites and blogs to check out, new issues of journals and magazines and so son. The consequence is decision-making of poor quality the bigger the amount of information gets. As complex the reason for the problem is, the solution is simple as long as we use the right tools and sharpen the skills which are needed.

There are many factors which influence “information overload”, but only little communicators can influence by their own behaviour. Mainly it’s the information characteristics. Communicators should steer these characteristics to better reach the inundated employees. According to the research done by professor Martin Eppler and aliter there are six communication principles distilled:

1. familiar surprise
2. detailed overview
3. flexible stability
4. simple complexity
5. concise redundancy
6. unfinished completeness

Overall the survey also made clear that there is a lot of potential in visual formats for reducing information overload. This know-how is underexploited so far within the communications community because of lacking know-how and tools. A know-how definitely to invest in as a professional communicators to get your messages trough in today’s world of information overload.