In April 2007, Stowe Boyd asked whether we’re faced with information overload, and suggested that the answer depends on how you approach information: focus or flow. He makes the case that if you try to focus too much you’ll feel overloaded, but if you approach information as a constant stream you can quickly learn to ignore what’s not important, and the information that’s critical to your work will make its way to you.

If you’re in what Stowe calls the “focus” way of thinking about information, you might be “hit” by an email out of the blue with surprising information, but in the flow world you’re less likely to be surprised when you’re constantly monitoring the flow of information.

In the flow world, a project is less likely to fall behind or lose focus because it will be apparent very quickly that something’s not working properly, and you can fix it long before it becomes a major problem. Being tuned into the flow means you can respond faster to a new trend, adjust a project incrementally as needs change, and contribute to what others are doing when your input will have the most impact — during the work, not after the fact.

How can companies ensure the flow of information is valuable and rich with the right kinds of content, in the right formats to be easily used and reused? Dana Gardner offers one suggestion:

Wouldn’t it be nice, as an employee, to have access to a huge library of corporate information newly enlivened with the appropriate contents extracted from all the various WebEx-types of sessions going on all around the company? Podcasts, blogs, wikis, videocasts — how to make and get at them inside the company? Many people will tell you they can still find out more on topics by doing a Google search than accessing the company informational “resources.” Tapping the WebEx collaboration sessions could produce a lot of podcasts, blogs, wikis, video-casts.

A wiki can be the hub that lets people collaboratively build and refine information that’s essential to their work in real time. An internal blog about visiting customers, a wiki space that’s dedicated to managing a project, a page that contains product logos for use in marketing materials and press stories — these are examples of how a wiki can be used to offer an ever-growing library of information…and constantly keep it up to date.