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Does Your Company Have The Right Information Policy?
On a recent management training course a delegate, who had recently been recruited, described how she had asked to see all the reports used in her new company. The next day 23 reports were sent to her. She did not understand any of the reprorts and, according to her, none of the report writers understood them either! This is not uncommon. All managers need data and information to manage effectively. Indeed information can be viewed as one of the most important resources companies have. The well-known saying that goes ‘information is power’ is truer today than it ever was. Efficient management can only occur if, amongst others, you have an efficient information policy.
The maner in which information policy is conducted within a given company and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach can be explained with the help of five different models. Which of these models best describes your information policy?
1. Technocratic Utopianism.
The information policy in many companies continues to have a strong technological orientation. The information is left in the hands of a just a few specialists, who view themselves as the information guardians. The goal of the information guardians is to create an information infrastructure which supplies each employee with just the right amount of information for them on their computer screen. The danger of this appraoch is that it frequently results in immense databases being built up which contain a huge amount of irrelevant or useless information. Behind this approach to information policy is the myth that the right technology will solve every problem. Where a technocratic utopianism information policy is in place you often fing that any employee not playing a direct part in the creation of the information infrastructure rarely uses the system, or does so ineffectively. This is because the sytem is generally far too complicated and overloaded to be able to easily work with. A sure sign of this type of information policy is the regular promise by the information guardians that after the installation of the next new bit of hardware/software/network/database and more information management training, users will be able to get the information that they really want and need.
2. The Anarchy Approach.
Information anarchy is fuelled by the spread of personal computers and other personal data storing devises. Because departments and individual employees have their own databases and their own information processing techniques everybody uses and processes their data differently. The disadvantages of this appraoch are obvious. No one has access to all the information because there no central point which accumulates all the information.
3. The Feudal Approach.
With this appraoch it is generally middle management that is in charge of procuring, saving, analysing and disseminating data. Middle management descides how information is interpreted and which reports are passed to senior management. Using this system there is no chance of management making decisions based on unfiltered, objective data. Indeed, key information about the current economic climate or financial situation of the company is not disseminated. Feudal systems flourish in strongly de-centralised companies.
4 The Monarchy System
A monarchy system is, perhaps, the most practical solution for eliminating the feudal approach. The Managing Director, or someone appointed by them, decides the rules of information policy. The power is centralised with business areas and departments having no influence over the matter. A prudent and enlightened ‘monarch’ will attempt to rationalise and standardise the information policy to work in a particularly economic way. The monarch decides what information is to be gathered, how it is processed and by whom, where it is stored and what it should be used for. Many large companies have organised their information policy in this way.
5. The Federal System.
Negotiation as a central instrument to balance out competing or seemingly unreconcilable interests is the distinguishing feature of a federal system. Companies operating such a system for their information policy have a culture which encourages co-operation and a willingness to learn. For example, at IBM a federal information system was introduced by Larry Ford, the former head of the Corporate Information Services department. He initially created an outline information policy for the whole company, which he then negotiated with the individual department heads. He achieved this by asking questions such as: Would you make available your information on product quality to other departments? Which information would you prefer to keep to yourselves?” One difficulty he had was transforming ‘information holders’ into ‘information givers’. This was due to managers thinking that being the 'holders of information' made them powerful and so more secure in their position within the company. They feared that once their information was widely available they would no longer be in control. It took a great deal of internal management training and re-education to overcome this fear.
