The democratisation of information
Posted by Grant Brewer on 01 Jul 2005
In any competitive marketplace, organisations need to balance agility with reliability. Much has been written about the need to create competitive advantage out of the ability to adapt to change – a capability often described as agility. Agility goes hand in hand in concepts such as self-organising teams, flat organisational structures and radical innovation. The common understanding is that organisations able to take advantage of the future as it unfolds before them will be able to reach customers first, building brand strength and market share ahead of their competitors. However, there is an almost equal amount of management literature dealing with the need for organisations to perform reliably; based on the idea that raising quality will result in meeting or exceeding the promises made to the marketplace. Six Sigma quality initiatives are all about removing variation from business processes, and are aimed at creating sustainable competitive advantage based on product or service quality.
This strategic balancing act requires constant decisions, not only from senior management but in different ways from all employees. For example, many meetings are held to reach agreement on decisions that involve (even if almost subconsciously) weighing up whether to head in a new direction, or whether to get better at what is already being done.
In any competitive marketplace, organisations need to balance agility with reliability. Much has been written about the need to create competitive advantage out of the ability to adapt to change – a capability often described as agility. Agility goes hand in hand in concepts such as self-organising teams, flat organisational structures and radical innovation. The common understanding is that organisations able to take advantage of the future as it unfolds before them will be able to reach customers first, building brand strength and market share ahead of their competitors. However, there is an almost equal amount of management literature dealing with the need for organisations to perform reliably; based on the idea that raising quality will result in meeting or exceeding the promises made to the marketplace. Six Sigma quality initiatives are all about removing variation from business processes, and are aimed at creating sustainable competitive advantage based on product or service quality.
This strategic balancing act requires constant decisions, not only from senior management but in different ways from all employees. For example, many meetings are held to reach agreement on decisions that involve (even if almost subconsciously) weighing up whether to head in a new direction, or whether to get better at what is already being done.
All of this balancing depends on:
Having the right people in the right place – usually easier to say than to achieve, because leaders don't often have the opportunity to completely refresh a team with new people. One of the challenges of the modern leader operating in a skill-shortage economy is to be capable of making better decisions despite not have a perfect dream team.
Getting the right information to these people, which will enable them to be focused on doing the right things well. This doesn't mean providing them with all available information – that will typically be counterproductive. It is the quality of the information that counts, not necessarily the quantity or even the precision of that information. The human mind, and therefore those of your employees (believe it or not!), is capable of tremendous analysis and comparison without needing complete, or infinitely accurate information. Good information networks exploit this human capacity.
Creating an information deluge will almost certainly inhibit decision making. This is one of the potential flaws of business intelligence systems if they are put into the wrong hands – they simply create increasing amounts of information that no-one knows what to do with. Interestingly, a survey commissioned by hp in 2005 found that the distractions caused by information overload can reduce the people's effective IQ by as much as ten points – which is twice that caused by the use of marijuana. The constant distractions of e-mail and instant messaging are particular ineffective.
Building an organisational culture that encourages information sharing and decision making -- requiring an understanding of how good decisions are made, including understanding how information is used and shared to enhance a decision. This decision making or action focused culture will soon become embedded in the corporate memory.
Expanding the organisational memory of past decisions, and freeing information people's personal experience and storage is what modern knowledge management needs to achieve. What ideas could you explore to encourage the free flow of information in your business?
Change your beliefs
Change your team's perspective on information, sharing and communication. You need to believe that better use of information will lead to better decision making that will in turn lead to a more competitive organisation capable of agility, whilst still being reliable enough to meet the promises it makes.
Make processes support information sharing
It is also worth ensuring business processes make information sharing possible. Check that your performance management rewards those that connect people or ideas, and those that collect and share information. Establish the expectation through out the organisation that information is to be shared and used. This is not easy to do, but will establish information democracy as a fundamental organisational philosophy. General Electric made a big deal of boundaryless over the last decade, a concept which embodied the desire to work and share across corporate boundaries
It can also be very useful and interesting to understand how people in the organisation gather and share information. An information flow analysis can show who the mavens or connectors are in different teams, enabling you to plan information sharing initiatives around these people. It is common to find that information flows along paths that are very different to the organisational structure – you will usually get a very different view on where the key decisions are being influenced and made.
Use simple technology
Look for opportunities to use simple technology to enable better information use. To date, organisations have often started with business intelligence and data warehousing initiatives. These are good initiatives, but the information that should be the focus of democratisation is the tacit knowledge locked in each employee's experience. Think people – not technology and databases.
Blogging has been a disruptive change within the publishing and news industries, and have started to have a similar impact within organisations. Starting a corporate web log might create the platform for employees to simply publish their ideas, resulting in a dramatically improved sharing of knowledge. Corporate knowledge managers often can't resist the urge to control and manage employee web logs, but this form of publishing works best when emancipated.
Instead, formality and structure can be put to better use in creating knowledge maps. A knowledge map can create an online pathway to specific information in the organisation. For example, a map of product innovation in an organisation would provide links to all the different information sources dealing with the issue and measure progress against targets or highlight success stories and best practices. Knowledge maps can use search engines, but are usually created and maintained by people – providing value from the interpretive skills of business people. Creating knowledge maps will help employees navigate the large amounts of information that exist in organisations.
There is a real need to be guarded about using complex technology to put enormous amounts of information in front of employees – more information doesn't necessarily lead to people that are better informed. It is the quality of the information and the interpretive analysis that counts.
Freeing information
Improving the flow of information through the organisation can lead to competitive advantage. Success will make meetings more effective, and make decision making more effective. It will also broaden the organisational memory, making the business more sustainable because there will be a greater depth of knowledge of processes. Freeing information will unlock perhaps the greatest benefit by starting to break down empires build on a knowledge is power philosophy, and in doing so will make the organisation more agile.
The democratisation of information was published as Strategym #28 in July 2005
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information, (1) | culture (1) | freedom, (1) | knowledge, (1) | team (1)
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