Sometimes more communication is bad...

Critical Mass Theory

Critical mass theory focuses on the number of users necessary for a communications media to become successful. This has shown to be a sound theory, evidenced in the exponential rise of users once a communications media method has reached critical mass... whether in telephones, faxes, emails, myspace, etc...

I'd like to share my experiences with what (I guess) would be called "diminishing returns theory" of communication media. In my work, there are several people on a team and cross teams that I communicate with regularly. To work quickly with these people, we all installed Yahoo Messenger. This worked well since we could communicate instantly without other people interrupting our work. Months pass and people get added slowly. Soon, my list has 40 employees on there. Trying to get work done and people message ask me the most random questions. It finally got to the point where I retired my yahoo ID and set up a new account.

Basically, critical mass was really low since it was a matter of convenience. The whole point was to be able to talk to key personnel while working on critical projects and avoid others who would either get in the way or cause distraction. Phone was not an option, since a lot of work was done in computer labs, and email was just far too slow. Once the list got past a certain size, random questions, comments, requests from people not on the project all negated the value of this form of communication media and I had to restart.

This is similar to the plague of email avalanche that infects most of us. Email is a valuable tool, but over use of the CC button, spam email, work items that chain letters forwarded by my mom... there is a point of diminishing returns where the value of some communication media declines with over-usage.