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Saturday, September 17, 2005
Batuhan: Where are you going?
By Allan S. B. Batuhan
Foreign Exchange
In the world we live in today, everything is in abundance. Granted there is still a shortage of food and just basic necessities for living in parts of the globe, but this is more a question of distribution and equity rather than of output and capacity.
Theoretically, there should be enough for everyone to make Bono and Bob Geldof happy, and then some.
Aside from the basics of survival, the one thing we seem to be in abundance of is data - masses and masses of data that will keep number-crunchers happy for ages to come.
But what obvious good has it provided to many organizations today, when knowledge is supposed to be at their fingertips?
What has become of the “knowledge organization” that so many management thinkers have predicted will emerge as the new organizational paradigm of our time?
The impact is not easy to discern. So many management teams, despite the availability of gigabytes of information on their competitors, are still operating in a knowledge vacuum, making ill-informed decisions and driving their organizations to extinction.
What seems to be the problem?
Last week we touched on the issues involved in strategic planning, and the difficulties faced by management in getting past the numbers and moving into valuable insights for decision-making. True, the availability of data in general should help make the process easier, but the fact that masses and masses of it exist, like water all over the city of New Orleans, most often impedes any visible breakthroughs.
To quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink!” Data, data all around, but not a single piece of information!
Take the development of the Internet, for example. It is there for those who know how to take advantage of it. Many companies have, to their credit and success. Countless others have not, or have done so badly and are suffering for it. Technology and information are out there for the taking, but organizations have to do something to be able to use them.
It all comes down to old-fashioned strategy in the end. Strategy for the use of information, and strategy for where the company ought to be going. Without these as guideposts, any organization is bound to get lost.
Out there, not all pieces of data are useful. I am reminded of our time in business school, when we were literally handed thousands of pages of material for reference. In the end, useful information was to be found in only a handful. The strategy of the educators was deliberate - managers had to be able to do information triage - to determine what it is they needed to know, and what else they could do without.
A systematic way of assimilating competitive information, disseminating it throughout the organization and drawing from it useful insights for shaping corporate strategy is imperative.
Of course, it goes without saying that information strategy is only subordinate to the overall corporate one.
How much an organization needs to know, what it needs to know, and what it does with what it knows is dictated by what direction it intends to go as an organization.
The globally ambitious need to be wise in the ways of the world. Those less so may have to be content with getting by on the local news.
(September 17, 2005 issue)
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