Need for a Process
An overwhelming amount of information
- More sources of information
- More ways to organize information
- More tools to analyze information
- Easier than ever to create “knowledge silos”
However, it is harder than ever to find the information you need “just in time.”
Notes:
On a daily basis as a knowledge worker, have you ever thought how much information has passed by you? Of that information, how much was of no use to you? How much do you wish you had and how much time did you spend determining if the information you had was the right information?
Face it, in our workplaces, we are faced with an “infoglut” -- too much information and too much information that is not applicable to problems we are trying to solve. We try to make decisions only to find we don’t have the right information or we can’t get to the right information.
Why does this happen? Because technology has allowed us to gather and produce data at many points in the organization. Cheap technology has allowed us to store large amounts of data, it has provided us with an enormous amount of easy to use tools to organize this data into “information” (and we will talk about the difference between data and information later) and neat tools are available to allow individuals to build “information silos”.
In short, we have become victims of our own success. We have an enormous amount of information at our fingertips and now we have to deal with the problem that all this information is difficult to access and often difficult to decide what piece of information is useful to help you, the knowledge worker, make decisions at the speed and with the accuracy that you require in today’s business environment.