What are the solutions

In the survey, 15% of managers claimed never to have suffered from information overload. These are their strategies for avoiding it:

• 59% said they skimmed through reading matter and discarded anything not of interest.
• 57% had a system of prioritising information according to urgency.
• 54% stored information for future reference
• 36% delegated it
• 23% said they simply ignored it
• 19% had rules to prevent information overload.

Not all these strategies are recommended by Lewis. Simply ignoring information can be dangerous. It could be important. The vast majority of managers admitted they needed to acquire a great deal of information to keep up with competitors. Interestingly senior managers felt this less strongly than junior and middle managers with only half saying they needed a lot of information compared with four out of five more junior ones. But most managers do need to keep abreast of the information they receive. They simply need to find better strategies for dealing with it.