Been a While
This was fun while it lasted. I tried to get strategic for a bit and stopped posting my daily blather. It was probably the right thing to do even though I never really got strategic. Alas.
Imminent Domain
Thoughtlessness is the default especially when there is too much to think about....
Latest posts
Optimize Everything
There is no faster way to fail than to try to optimize everything
Chasing Certainty
Can you do anything when everything is unknown.
Knowledge Bits
Knowledge is fragmented and distributed. Centralizing knowledge is difficult because information changes too frequently and the location of truth is not certain. Organizations have all kinds of methods of dealing with the chaos that is information management. Independently, these systems make sense, but these systems are anything but independent. More ambitious organizations try to connect these…
Communication and Coordination
Communication and coordination are critical for any type of collaborative effort. Communication and collaboration is limited more by human behavior than by computer systems. Computer systems add automated notifications and messages to facilitate coordination and communication, but these don't really address the core issue. In a lot of ways, these automatic notifications and emails cause more harm…
Quick Information
Extracting information takes time. Creating and presenting information also takes time. The market of information is full of contradictions. But producers and consumers of information often want different things. Sometimes you need information quickly...Sometimes you need more details. Quick information often leaves out details. These details sometimes make a big difference, but other times they…
Energy and Information
No matter how you look at it, information processing requires a lot of energy. While the amount of energy needed for big data and AI is well documented, I am thinking about all the human energy expended for information processing. We are sensing and acquiring and doing something with information on a second by second basis. The human brain is very selective about how and when it processes…
All at Once
Does information emerge all at once or does it seep out slowly. While this may seem like a philosophical question, it has practical management implications. If the information emerges all at once it is possible to make more definitive plans. However, if information seeps out over time, it is harder to make plans. Plans with contingencies are always harder to execute because information may not be…
What's Changed
What's changed is a subset of what's new. And what's new is a subset of what's changed. It is all a matter of timing and this what makes information management so challenging for organizations. Sometimes, you can start with a clean slate but other times you are working with existing information. Updating existing information is often more difficult than adding new information -- especially when…
What's New
There is a human bias for new things. New information is no exception. Humans are often seeking new information. New information might give us an advantage somehow. But not all new information is necessarily important. Some new information is trivial. Some information appears trivial but over time becomes meaningful. And there really isn't a good way to know the difference in advance.