Dinesh Tantri of Organic KM found KM survey results-Economist Intelligence Unit
A report in webitpr on a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit says :"Knowledge management solutions are now the most important strategic technologies for large companies, according to a new report and survey of European executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Tata Consultancy Services."
One of the most interesting findings is "Two-thirds of companies in the survey complain that while their IT systems generate huge volumes of data, much of it is not actionable."
Dinesh found this interesting for the use of the word "actionable." I find this interesting as an expert in knowledge management and after spending my first week in Goldratt School's application expert training where we talked about ways of thinking through these conflicts.
One school of thought says that the more information we collect, the better our decisions. The other school says that we have to make decisions based on what we already know. A classic problem: do I stay or do I go? There are plenty of assumptions embedded into the thinking here. And there is probably even a different conflict that goes beyond whether or not to collect more information. To move forward, one has to have confidence in their decisions, and for that to happen the information and knowledge on which one bases their decisions has to be good (actionable). However, our normal mode of operation doesn't help us know what information is the right information, so we tend to collect more and more, burying ourselves in the trappings of making a decision. This gets back to the root of the question: why are we collecting this information in the first place? What does it tell us about the state of the business? What critical information don't we have that would enable us to move forward?
Dinesh highlights some of these issues as well, as does the survey itself.