When was the last time you scheduled a meeting and invited eight people instead of the three people who really needed to be there simply because you didn't want anyone to feel left out?

HP ASC was rife with this problem.

Now, we all know that communication is very important, and that many organizational problems are caused by a failure to communicate. Most people try to solve this problem by increasing the amount of communication: cc'ing everybody on an e-mail, having long meetings and inviting the whole staff, and asking for everyone's two cents before implementing a decision.

But communications costs add up faster than you think, especially on larger teams. What used to work with three people in a garage all talking to one another about everything just doesn't work when your head count reaches 10 or 20 people. Everybody who doesn't need to be in that meeting is killing productivity. Everybody who doesn't need to read that e-mail is distracted by it. At some point, overcommunicating just isn't efficient.

Exactly.

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