You need to keep people informed, so you inform them. Good. If you don’t inform them, they are not being informed, so you need to inform them to keep them informed. Whoa, did you just get dizzy!? Yeah, that’s because I’m talking in circles, stating the obvious.
But it’s not that obvious. In fact, it’s wrong!
The pitfall that any well meaning person may fall in, who tries to keep people informed, is to give too much information. Any person can only consume a certain volume of information of a given kind.
If you give more information than someone can consume, they will either try to consume it all and not get any of it or they will randomly select information to consume and more or less ignore the rest.
The important thing to remember is that there IS a limit and if you reach the limit, you are no longer in control of what information you are giving! You will soon be sending mails with “important” flags and re-sending mails while you’re cursing at the other person for not reacting. Ok, that person might be a moron, but one other likely explanation is that you have given that person too much information already! If so, it’s your fault!
So, yes, keep people informed, but it’s actually better to give less, but important information, than to give a lot of information.
Also I think, it might be helpful to answer one or two FAQs by guessing about the context to reduce circulation. In case of group someone might think too much but could be useful in cases and reduce misunderstanding.
I might be extending your topic but it also the importance, value of the information, whether it is asked for or might be asked also need some focus. And just to keep inform, if we put already known information that might start confusion and when this became repetitive people might start ignoring all of the information on every topic.
Also, a mature amount of information should be passed. If we just pass pre-mature information and keep informing without being asked for may result the same as above.
Altaf, I think you just outlined subjects for two new blog posts …
I was expecting a reply, not two more posts!!
Well, I will wait for those.
Also, I would like to request a post on “In-house communication” focusing face-to-face conversation and mailing.