How Communication Technology clashes with Human Biology

Technology has transformed the way we work. It provides flexibility, speed and agility, enabling teams to collaborate across locations and time zones.
 
The modern world has created an environment where
=> Reward is abundant - our brains are wired for, and constantly seek it
=> Humans are easily distracted - our brains are wired to constantly scan the environment for threats
=> Humans have poor impulse control
 
These ancient parts of our brains have not evolved in millennia
 
So when you combine this with the multitude of communication channels we use at work, with no clear guidelines for their policy and usage, it is easy to see how we can quickly become overwhelmed, distracted, lose focus and energy.
 
Technology has become a saboteur to deep focus, productivity, creativity and wellbeing and it encourages bad habits.
 
It is costing organisations heavily and there is a ton of research on it going back at least a decade.
 
Few organisations have any clear guidelines on what communication channels to use when, appropriate meeting & collaboration culture, allowing for focus time, interruption etiquette etc.
 
In large companies this may be endemic. In scaling start-ups there is an inflection point when this starts to happen - around 30 people where structures and complexity start to emerge.
 
Consider the math's:
 
=> In a company of 20 people, there are 190 possible communication connections between employees. 
=> Increase this to 50 and you have 1,225 - over 6x more
 
As organisations grow rapidly, collaboration overload can happen - the day becomes filled with meetings, everyone is overwhelmed with Slack and Teams messages and the real work starts happening out of normal hours
 
Research has shown that knowledge workers receive on average 117 emails a day and can check emails, Teams or Slack up to 30 times per hour.
 
Some reports state that knowledge workers only achieve 2.5 to 3 hours of productivity a day with 76% feeling drained by meeting-heavy days and 68% reporting insufficient focus time.
 
So not only do you start to lose workforce productivity, the loss of focus time harms creativity, innovation and wellbeing, which left unchecked can lead to burnout and further lost productivity through sickness and high turnover.  
 
If this has not yet emerged, there are some simple frameworks around communication and decision making which you can easily adopt to prevent this from happening.
 
We can run a straightforward a health check for companies already seeing the signs or worried they are emerging, to better understand their collaboration habits and employee engagement 
 
Drop a note in the comments if this is something you are experiencing as an organisation or that resonates with you