Scott Berkun: How to stop overcommunication:
Spolsky’s points [about Brook’s law] are generally sound, but I believe there’s a deeper cause for overcommunication.
The reason committees suck is authority is distributed across a large number of people. This makes everyone feel like everyone needs to know about everything. And worse, people fight in the backroom to obtain control over the committee, so the visible authority and real authority can be far apart.
Overcommunication is a symptom of lack of clarity over power. If you want better communication, clarify the following:
- Who is the single person who has decision making authority for decision X
- Who should have input into that decision
- Who should be informed when the decision has been made
This sets everyone’s expectations for who needs to know what. It reduces endless forwarding of fyi material on the hopes someone might need it.
The person with decision making authority should be collaborating with others, and can delegate their authority, but no one should ever be confused that they have the power to make the call.
YMMV, really. It won’t work out if you don’t trust one person to (effectively) consult the others in the decision-making process – but if that’s a concern, you’re probably screwed anyway.
Does it really matter if the key decision-maker is technically in the committee or not? If you get the chair to be that key point, it should still work out – as long as the other committee members are clear about this point. Consensus can be built, yes, but it won’t do to have many people trying to build different ones, because then it becomes a majority thing.
Either way, from observation, the more people you have, it really gets more difficult even just to to coordinate things, much less go around and try to get everyone committed to something. A group of 6 is bad enough; 10 is really way too much.
This management thing is so finicky. Must be because it involves humans. Systems administration is an entirely different pot.
