Freeing information from autocracy & over control
Posted by Grant Brewer on 15 Jan 2008
It is always striking how difficult it is to get hold of information from an organisation as a customer, or even as an employee. It is not unusual to be chased from call centre agent to call centre agent as you try to determine an accurate and truthful answer to your questions. Just as common is the employee that struggles to find the correct information such as the most up to date report or a contract. In today's post-information age, getting access to data in organisations shouldn't be this difficult. People have got used to the ease with which they find information with tools such as Google, and this expectation has got to be translated into organisations. Freeing information is about treating customers and employees as partners and with respect. It is about allowing them the freedom to define their own contribution to your organisation as either a customer or an employee.
This isn't about creating anarchy, but is about the kind of leadership that is focused on:
- Getting the right people focused on the right things.
- Getting their people the right information and tools they need to do the job properly.
- Making sure they understand and are committed to the outcomes (goals, objectives, purpose or whatever you call it – it really doesn't matter).
- Getting yourself out of the way so that their people can perform to their potential.
The point of good leadership is to be capable of scale by getting the most out of the team of people they lead. This means getting things done through people and doing more than you could possibly do yourself.
Creating the context and environment for others to perform at their best is your goal as a leader. A facet of creating that context is to free process and information from over-control or autocracy. Some of these ideas seem to be very much the opposite of what is required by Sarbanes Oxley, internal audit or other regulatory authorities (in this time of increasing post-Enron control awareness), but it is possible to achieve good governance and a good control environment without locking information down in a bureaucracy.
There is always likely to be a difficult tension between the risk and control requirements and the desire to free information. Similarly, there will often be a difficult tension between a visionary leader who believes he knows what needs to be done, knows how to do it and is driven by a high level of perfection in the execution. When you have such a leader, it is easy to slip into the belief that other team members (especially more junior employees) or customers don't really need to know or understand issues because the organisation is lucky enough to have a leader that knows what is best. This is rarely true and there are very few organisations that have the luxury of a visionary Steven-Jobs-style leader that is capable of such clarity. And even at Apple, the idea that Steven Jobs is directly driving innovation ideas is in all probability a myth. Without taking anything away from his skill, there is most likely a substantial team that is responsible for many of the innovative products they have developed.
Information freedom should also be extended to customers. Making it easier for customers to get the information they need on your iproducts or services is going to increase the value they derive from your company making them more likely to be more valuable customers to you. Today, the people that are your customers and employees expect to be able to interact with large amounts of information. You need to give them the tools to do so securely and then let them get on with accessing your information on their own terms. The day when organisations could filter the information they pass onto employees and customers are gone. This is all part of the growing influence that both employees and customers have on an organisation; where they need to make informed decisions. You can no longer follow a traditional paternal approach where you define what people need.
Given that these interactions frequently involve technology, there is also a tremendous opportunity to collect data (of course, with the appropriate restraints, disclosures and permissions so that you remain ethical and within the law). This rich data can be mined, even whilst protecting the privacy of the individual employee or customer to provide valuable insight into the types of information people need, or into the way in which they go about their work or activities. Such information should be informing your product or service design and potentially the way your manage your organisation.
Finding innovative ways to free information will require understanding what information your organisation has, how it is organised and stored, how it is (and should be) secured, and how it is distributed. Most organisations produce enormous amounts of information that just isn't accessible by the employees or customers that want to use it.
Information wants to be free; it wants to be used and even when you try to restrict access to it, your "secret" usually ends up getting out into the open. A much better approach is to embrace this truth and to create an environment where your information is free to be used by the relevant people in a way that _they _believe contributes the most to their decision making. You can no longer make that judgement yourself. So, take a fresh look at the way in which information in your organisation is created and shared with employees or customers through your various communication channels. There might a great deal of value in thinking differently and getting information to the people that need to use it.
Categories
Essays | Strategy | Intelligence Strategym
Tags
management (3) | information (2) | transparency (1) | access to information (1) | freedom (1)
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