Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock”. 1934.

This line from T.S. Eliot’s The Rock, seems to perfectly frame the question facing many organizations. We live in an era of unprecedented information access (quantity and choices of source) and yet access alone does not result in the creation of knowledge. To the contrary, in some ways, it might be impeding the recognition of knowledge and it’s transfer. It’s the proverbial signal versus noise problem. More is more, but more is not better.

This is a human challenge. People are critical to the process of converting information into intelligence and knowledge. This may sound esoteric but consider the practical implications. Co-workers struggle to keep up with the information generated by their teams let alone relevant information from outside their teams that is widely recognized as the most critical for innovation. Communicators struggle to get their messages through the noise to the people who care.

Having worked on these problems for a few years, my impression is that it is changing. That the foundation is being laid for tools for discernment and engagement. I believe the most effective tools are built to augment human expertise rather than replace it. For a pragmatic example consider solutions that allow subject matter experts to efficiently identify and communicate highly relevant information to narrow audiences with particular information needs. This creates multiple layers of value by enhancing the capability of both the subject matter expert as well as those in the audience. It allows them to say — here is the knowledge in that information.

“If the President of the United States can get a daily briefing on the state of the world, why can’t we get one on our own company?”

True story. That simple question led to a phone call to us and ultimately to a simple solution.

Like all of us their problem was not access to information – rather it was discerning the information that matters.  In this case about competitors and industry developments including a new market entrant. Millions of information workers face this same problem regardless of their industry, role or profession.

But wait. Remember the promise of “information at your fingertips”? Remember the promise of “jet packs”?

People have been forced to become information hunters and gatherers when they should be harvesting intelligence. The root cause of this problem is that our collective ability to create information has far outpaced tools that help us keep track of what matters. This problem is not getting better and it is not going away. Despite the many hours of conversations we have had with companies about these issues, few have encapsulated the problem as clearly as comparing it to the president’s daily briefing.

Many organizations have assumed that people can fend for themselves using search, browsing internal portals and collating information from various sources. Perhaps the rationale is that people fend for themselves this way outside of work. But the “info-entertainment” the Internet offers is very different than business and professional settings where what you don’t know can hurt you.

In reality, countless hours are spent looking for information only to be caught-off-guard anyway. In this case, what if the marketing department had that daily intelligence briefing? A bunch of good things happen. Important information that might otherwise be overlooked is presented in the right context to the people who need it, people spend less time looking for information which collectively adds up to huge value, and investments in content and systems are better utilized. For people who review and share information as part of their job, these benefits are multiplied across everyone that benefits. To give a sense of the magnitude, these factors have led one customer to assign a 4 to 1 ROI to their topic intelligence investments.

Every organization should leverage the wealth of information available today. The tools exist to do this. But doing so requires looking at the problem differently and not relying on people to fend for themselves. That is why this example seems so valuable.  Ask simple questions. It may lead to simple but effective solutions.

There can be little doubt that we are entering an era that requires aggressive information management, especially for companies looking to establish or maintain a long-term competitive edge, since that edge is now moving faster than ever and with increasing nuance. Certainly, executives are starting to see higher levels of accountability for data management behaviors, with the expectation that they transform valuable information into business behavior that drives innovation, and ultimately, the bottom line.

This concept of doing something with information has a cold, hard reality – we have 24 hours in a day and we have a finite amount of attention we can devote to anything.  This is why the next phase of innovation in information management must focus on how information is used rather than how it is produced and stored. While those two macro considerations are related, a focus on the latter is going to produce incredible changes in our ability to do something with information. This is why the future belongs to those who can take information overload and create action.

Attensa’s platform addresses the need to manage the ever-increasing number of interactions between people and workplace content. Unless there are tools separate the signal and the noise it is likely that problem gets worse, not better.  The tools do not have to be complicated.

The video below shows a simple feature implemented in the Attensa app (and available in the API) that sorts items by personal relevancy ranking.  Relevancy predictions are based on personal profiles and the sort eliminates unranked items and then presents the items based on rank and date.  This results in significant time saving and reduces the likelihood of missing the items that matter.

The report brings together two important perspectives.  The first is that of organizations of various sizes expressed through a survey earlier in the year.  The second is AIIM’s own point of view regarding “Intelligent Information Managment”.  What is the state?  Dawn and time to get busy.

Here is a summary from AIIM.

“In February 2018 we set out to quantify what organizations thought of “Intelligent Information Management,” how they see the relationship between IIM and Digital Transformation, and where they are on both their Digital Transformation journeys and their plans for the underlying technologies that fuel core IIM practices and methodologies. Here’s what we discovered:

1. Every organization is on — or should be on! — a Digital Transformation journey. The heart of this Transformation journey is understanding, anticipating, and redefining internal and external customer experiences.
2. Digital Transformation effectiveness is imperiled by a rising tide of information chaos and confusion.
3. The rising tide of information chaos and confusion is creating a demand for new information management practices that extend beyond traditional ECM.
4. How organizations describe these new information management practices is still evolving.
5. AIIM believes that four key Intelligent Information Management practices or methodologies — and an associated set of modular and configurable technology building blocks — are critical to Digital Transformation success:

a. Modernizing the information toolkit.

b. Digitalizing core organizational processes.

c. Automating compliance & governance.

d. Leveraging analytics & machine learning.”

John Mancini, The State of Intelligent Information Management © AIIM 2018, www.aiim.org

There were a few survey results and a couple of quotes from responses that go to the heart of how organizations deal with the flood of content each day i.e. produced by the first digital wave.  The second digital wave is going to be how organizations deliver it.  That is the heart of digital transformation – engaging internal and external audiences more effectively.

Here are a couple of interesting survey responses:

“I think anything with word management in it is outdated.  The world today is about dynamism and agility, and ‘management’ sounds so 20th century.  I don’t care where and how content is managed, I am interested in how it is leveraged and insight derived from it.”

I agree with this and in particular the fact that managing content is becoming the wrong business process to succeed.  The focus needs to be on managing peoples scarce attention rather than content.

“The main problem is that digital transformation is a veneer on top of existing systems. The system and processes architecture needs to be re-examined and thought put into processes for very real continuous improvement.  Unfortunately most companies only pay lip service.”

This also rings true but it should be viewed in the context of one of the survey questions “Our information management strategy needs to be modernized to meet modern problems.”  92% of the respondents agreed with 64% of them “completely agreeing”.

Is the right term to describe all this “Content Services” as Gartner promotes or is it “Intelligent Information Management” that AIIM promotes?  One thing is clear – change is coming.

The adoption of workstream tools is impressive. Slack alone has grown at a rate that makes it the fastest growing business application to-date. Microsoft Teams and the many other viable workstream tools are joining the movement and there is a clear epic being written about how the workstyles of teams are changing.

Traditionally, content has been crucial to many business processes. By content, I mean items that contain information. Like news, research reports, articles, internal documents, files and even the workstreams themselves. Content provides insight. Importantly, it is the medium for the insights and knowledge of others outside of the team or organization. Often it is these perspectives and insights that drive innovation and better results.

What is the role of outside content in the emerging workstream paradigm?

It should be big right? Workstreams are about teams moving projects of all sizes forward and content is about insight to work smarter.

But bringing content into the workstream model has some challenges. Done right there is huge value added. Done wrong, content can actually distract and diminish the effectiveness of the workstream approach. The two key considerations are the relevancy and context of the information injected into the workstream.

Often the first hurdle that “workstreamers” confront with content is that the worlds of workstreams and the worlds of content function completely differently. Slack and other tools enable the creation of channels that match the specific needs of teams in the context of their work. Teams can self-define channels around the work they are doing much easier than prior generations of tools. Once defined, messages, alerts, files, tasks, voice and other types of content can be leveraged in a very interactive and effective way. But note that all of these types of content are created by, contributed by, or organized by, people participating in the channel. What about all the content that does not work like that? The so-called outside content. That is where enormous opportunity exists.

Outside content is created continuously by others who are often subject matter experts. Some of this content functions as it has for decades, assembled by publishers and sold as products. Premium third-party content like journals, law and regulation compilations and analysis and news follow this model. However, there is also an entirely new class of web-based expert content. To be clear, while this content is web-based it should not be confused with the web in general. These are specific sources of expert perspective not the morass of stuff that is the “web”.

Effectively presenting relevant content in the context of a workstream is hard. There are many sources about many subjects. There simply isn’t a “source” that can be paired with a “channel”. Exploiting content as part of a workstream environment like Slack means discerning specific items of content that are relevant to a given channel. That is new. It is also definitely worth figuring out because workstream tools are where more and more work is happening. If the right content can be effectively presented in the context of a workstream lots of good things happen. For example, valuable outside perspectives can be incorporated into work, team members are able to work from shared perspectives, and the value of content assets can be fully exploited.

All of which are sources of competitive advantage and worth the effort.

What’s the strategy for content in workstreams? Please share your thoughts.

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock”. 1934.

This line from T.S. Eliot’s The Rock, seems to perfectly frame the question facing many organizations. We live in an era of unprecedented information access (quantity and choices of source) and yet access alone does not result in the creation of knowledge. To the contrary, in some ways, it might be impeding the recognition of knowledge and it’s transfer. It’s the proverbial signal versus noise problem. More is more, but more is not better.

This is a human challenge. People are critical to the process of converting information into intelligence and knowledge. This may sound esoteric but consider the practical implications. Co-workers struggle to keep up with the information generated by their teams let alone relevant information from outside their organizations that is widely recognized as the most critical for innovation. Communicators struggle to get their messages through the noise to the people who care.

Having worked on these problems for a few years, my impression is that it is changing. That the foundation is being laid for tools for discernment and engagement. I believe the most effective tools are built to augment human expertise rather than replace it. For a pragmatic example consider solutions that allow subject matter experts to efficiently identify and communicate highly relevant information to narrow audiences with particular information needs. This creates multiple layers of value by enhancing the capability of both the subject matter expert as well as those in the audience. It allows them to say — here is the knowledge in that information.

I have written and spoken about the impact of information abundance for many years.  By itself, info abundance is simply a positive spin on information overload.  It is the consequence of abundance on our business and professional lives (increasingly intertwined) that are interesting.

May’s observations get to the heart of why we care at all – to create value i.e. innovation, service to customers, leadership, risk management etc.  The importance of information and shared insight in enabling these value creating activities is well accepted.  But there has always been a caveat that the volume of available information is overwhelming, so we can only do our best.  During the first decade or two of our digital transition that caveat was a valid.  May’s list of”New Know Realities” points to how this is changing.

This was underscored for me recently during a conversation with a CEO who observed how important it was to build a culture of continuous learning.  To paraphrase, if people within the organization are not learning their value to customers is diminished which in-turn means their value to the organization is diminished.  Leaders can’t let that happen.

May’s New Reality #1 is “You will be expected to do something with information.” He observes:

All this newly digitized information has had, relatively speaking, little impact on behavior and little impact on organizational outcomes.   We are now exiting a historical moment of undermanned and only occasionally acted-upon information to an environment requiring much more aggressive information management. You as an executive will be held much more accountable for your data management behaviors. You will be expected to transform “data lead” into “knowledge gold”.

This concept of doing something with information has a cold, hard reality – we have 24 hours in a day and we have a finite amount of attention we can devote to anything.  This is why the next phase of innovation in information management must focus on how information is used rather than how it is produced and stored.   While those two macro considerations are related a focus on the later is going to produce incredible changes in our ability to do something with information.  That is why relevancy is the next killer app.

There are many reasons that tracking the use of acquired content or assigning value to the work product of libraries and information centers is difficult.  Among them are the lack of centralized management of resources and the failure to capture content engagement data.  These are now solvable problems.  

Centralizing the management of external information allows it to be more effectively used and also more effectively accounted for.  Interactions between information center customers and content can be monitored and reported, regardless of the route the content may have taken to the recipient.  For example, content from different external publishers may be combined in a briefing that is read across a range of devices from email to smartphone.  If these services are built on a common platform this data is readily available to answer utilization questions, as well as other questions that impact information centers and allow them to better serve their audience.

For example…

• Which publishers supplied the most utilized content?  
• Which were the most popular services?  
• Who were the most active content consumers?
• What part of the organization do they belong to?

The answers to these questions, and others, offer important insights, not the least of which is; did we spend wisely and how should be budgeting going forward?  

Attensa generates these insights by analyzing interactions with content across publishers, services, internal channels and other information sources.  The graphic below illustrates this type of aggregated content engagement reporting.

While there can certainly be interactions outside Attensa, these reports enable analysis of the extended data from a range of sources and form a basis for understanding how content is being used, by whom, across diverse publishers and services.  

We believe that helping people discover, access, and collaborate with scientific and business information is one of the most practical and impactful applications of big data thinking. Scientific content in particular is the foundation of research and is capable of fostering and accelerating life changing innovation. Understanding how information resources are used to make better resource decisions is just the start.