The Solution
Tomorrow's strategic technology investments will present more choices for organizations than they will know what to do with. Companies will be able to set up the technology that best fits their organization rather than the other way around. The value that organizations gain from these investments will depend on the foresight and intelligence that go into determining how their people will use technology.
There is a cliché that goes something like the following: If organizations
only had greater quantities of cheaper, faster, and more useful information,
they could increase their profitability and enhance their competitive
positions in the global marketplace, etc., etc. On the surface, that seems
to make sense. If you offer employees greater quantities of better information
more quickly and at a lower cost, you should reasonably expect their performance
to improve as a result.
Although in many situations where better performance resulted, even the improved information access often had little or no impact on people's behavior. Most of us are aware of the risks of smoking. Yet millions of people still pick up the habit. Though there should be strong links between information and behavior in the enterprise, the real problem most executives face isn't inadequate information, it's the organization's unwillingness to change behavior in the face of good information.
On an industry-wide level (micro level), some companies get strong returns on their digital technology investments. What seems true, however, is that on a macro level more money has been wasted on computerization than has been created.
No one denies that computerization and networking can add enormous value.
But when we look at the numbers, it is clear that companies are not basing
their computer investments on careful calculations of returns or added
value. Other factors such as culture, politics, fashion, and competition
also come into play. Best-practice methodologies often are irrelevant
benchmarks for many companies investing tens or hundreds of millions of
dollars in computers and networks.
There's a fundamental difference between managing an information
system and running a business on information, just as there's a difference
between operating a rivet gun and making airplanes. Managers intent on
establishing technical systems subscribe to different values and practices
than managers trying to set up productive business environments for their
workers. Operating a business on information has a much broader array
of interaction and interdependence than managing an information system.
When managers try to fit inflexible, mechanistic systems into organic
contexts, they need new vocabularies to explain how people in organizations
really use these systems.
Indeed, the word information loses its edge when redefined in business contexts; culture and politics and relationships may generally become at least as important.
Does the organization want to use its networks to centralize
or decentralize responsibility? Does the enterprise want to make every
bit of data accessible to everyone all the time? Or does it want to build
a new information-access hierarchy into its intranet? Should individuals
be rewarded for sharing information? Should people be encouraged to strike
up electronic relationships with employees in other departments? Or should
interdepartmental fraternization be deemed an inappropriate use of the
network? For now, these rhetorical questions provide food for thought,
however some of us encounter them in our daily business lives.
Conclusion
If an organization does decide to improve the way it shares information, it should focus first on changing the culture of sharing. Most information managers know little about designing incentives for enterprise collaboration, much less invoking it. That's why responsible information departments have to insist from the beginning that effective enterprise computing and groupware don't depend on transparency, replication, and semi-structured databases. They depend on how individuals are rewarded and punished for sharing and withholding information. They are about behavior, culture, and politics.
