Information - Information That Leaves Us Ignorant

Think about that.

A delicious irony, an inconvenient truth? How can it be that we live in a world where we have such incredible access to information. A world where almost every piece of human history, learning, experience and fact and yet we can be so lacking in knowledge or worse — less capable and prepared as a result.

We witness clients drowning in information of the wrong and least helpful kind. We see them inundated with information that was useful in the past but isn’t going to be valuable in the future and we witness clients with no idea how to get the information that they need. Largely because they suffer from Rumsfeld Syndrome — not knowing what they don’t know.

Information Has To Inform.

Whether it’s teaching someone how to do something, providing critical context or for getting to the root causes of issues. Identifying and understanding how to deal with this information deserves far more attention — it needs to have much deeper respect and attention as a field.

“The information we choose to take note of drives decision making, prioritizes what we pay attention to and creates our world views…”

In our new world we should not be short of information. The question is how we make use of what’s readily available and accessible to us.

Making good use of the right information can be a full time job these days. It depends on having an informational mentality. The right mentality will prioritise what’s important given the situation. The right mentality will be able to structure Information in a highly meaningful way.

Opinions and facts are not the same thing and they are everywhere. Our brains soak up information and that’s what makes up our minds. That can be a good thing or not a good thing depending on our terms of reference.

“In truth we are what we read and what we choose to believe — unless we make a conscious choice to open our minds to multiple perspectives and accept that there are many ‘versions of the truth’…”

It would be surprising to hear an organization dismiss the importance of information. But we observe that too few invest time and effort in making sure that information is treated as a prized asset across the orgabisation.

In Summary — Creating A Healthy Information Based Business

It’s a common axiom that we now live in the Information Age. If that’s true far too many businesses didn’t get the memo.

The rise of social platforms as a primary method of communication for business combined with a strong aversion to complexity (anything that takes up precious time) creates an environment that doesn’t encourage valuable/meaningful information to flourish.

A healthy environment for information requires that everyone sees the nurturing of Information as part of their day job. This would see a clear and meaningful distinction between the different types of information flowing through our organizations — and where the purpose and value of it is clear to everyone.

“When information is structured, meaningful and put into context it’s merit can be more objectively assessed…”

We would observe an environment where curiosity and desire for insight are evident. It would be a place where it’s the norm to question, to challenge and to ask more as a result. Having information as the oxygen of the business in this way would stimulate more interest and understanding and more ownership and engagement on what is actually happening.