The 'overload' question has been keeping me awake at night for a while now.

I've been wondering if the concept of 'communication management', as such, is becoming redundant? It seems to me, based on my client work over the past couple of years, that how individuals respond to the communication overload issue varies dramatically from person to person and organisation to organisation.

In some organisations every communication is operational and actionable. There is no sense of overload here and any redundant or irrelevant material is rigorously excluded. Typically this might be a military or strictly hierarchical operationally focused service delivery company. This is a controlled and directive working environment.

At the other end of the spectrum is the media or consultancy sector, for example, where the flow of information is open, uncontrolled and can be experienced as overwhelming. It is in this environment that I think we can discover a strategy for survival. People in this sector regard information as their working medium.

They select what they want from a virtually infinite variety of sources creating for themselves a bespoke set of communication lines which are specifically tailored to their needs. They are surrounded by communication of all kinds and pick and choose what they need and what is relevant to help them do their jobs. They are effectively a self-segmenting audience in internal communications terms and they manage their own messaging.

I think these two dimensions highlight the tension which concerns us all so much. There is a gap between our role as advisors, interpreters, message writers, message managers and channel controllers, the 'push' side of our work; and our role as enablers of all aspects of organisational communication, dialogue, feedback, knowledge exchange and providing access to sources. Here we aim to create a 'pull' culture where our people are supported in taking ownership of their own information needs.

This is a rapidly evolving media and information world and I think that, as communicators, we should recognise it as our new operating environment. There is a strong drive to organisational transparency, and an element of this is understanding that we need to change our perception of what an information rich environment really means for our people. This may mean relinquishing our historically linear approach to managing communications. Perhaps we need to devote more time to helping people understand that an infinity of information is not necessarily an intimidating overload, but can be viewed from a positive and self determined position.

There is another complicating factor in the mix. The increasing ubiquity of social media in the workplace is starting to break down organisational barriers. Traditional boundaries to the flow of information are become permeable, and this is creating real difficulties for those of us who are accountable for maintaining the integrity and, sometimes, the confidentiality of business communications. But maybe that is a question for another discussion ...............