Zen and the art of Information Management
This is a rework of a blog I wrote all the way back in 2015, back then digitisation/digitalisation/digital transformation was barely a glint in the eye of the zeitgeist, the principles still very much apply though.
The title is “borrowed” from the Robert M.Pirsig book on the metaphysics of quality. To paraphrase Pirsig’s description of his own book, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It is however at least reasonably factual on information management.
“Every company is a software company. You have to start thinking and operating like a digital company.” — Satya Nadella
This post will change your life. Well OK, maybe it won’t, it will hopefully at least make you think about how managing your information affects your digital aspirations.
Throughout this article you can use the terms information management & digital nearly interchangeably. The point being if you want your digital transformation then IM really is at the heart of it.
The IM in kraken.im stands for “information management”, it used to be I got asked a lot what information management was, or worse, what the point of it was. In the last 12 months though, I’ve been getting less of that and more about what it means to be digital.
The answer to both the above questions is really the same one; ‘information management/digital is a state of mind’, now stop giggling and let me explain myself.
One of my favourite TED talk’s is by General Stanley McCrystal, I heartily recommend giving it a watch. In his talk he discusses his time in Iraq fighting an insurgency and how of all the new tactics weapons & technology they tried, the one change that ultimately made all the difference was the choice to share information amongst all the concerned parties. This was a huge change for an organisation who’s whole lifeblood is secrecy. One statement in particular really struck a chord with me:
“Information is only of value if you give it to people who have the ability to do something with it.”
Think about that sentence though, it’s a pretty obvious one on the face of it, then, ask yourself if you really think the organisation or the project you work with shares information well?
In this post though I’d like to share a few thoughts on, not on technology and minutiae but the things that need to exist to allow sharing of information to flourish, and by the end of it you’ll hopefully reach information management Zen.
You’ve almost certainly in your time come across the term “information silo’s”, this is a rare thing; a management buzzword that won’t die and refuses to go out of fashion, suggesting that there must be some truth to it rather than a fad. Let’s face it, the project team don’t give all the information operations need, procurement don’t care what engineering asked for and no one cares what IM thinks! These are all people who work for the same company on the same project yet the pervading culture is one of secrecy, perhaps not deliberately but the outcome is the same.
On modern engineering projects work can be undertaken on a truly vast scale. Engineering design takes place in multiple locations, in different time zones, construction at multiple sites and suppliers pop up on just about every continent. All of these elements involve not only multiple silos within a single organisation but multiple silos within multiple organisations at different times of day. You think one company has problems, those problems just got squared.
The facts are actually pretty parlous about what poor data costs asset owners and but there are a few out there, take it as a given though that not knowing about your assets and equipment is a bad thing. Lack of information is an insipid cost that permeates through every part of your business and asset lifecycle: increased down time, inability to repair, lack of spares information, increased failures all add up, and frustratingly often don’t have a handy bottom line cost associated with them.
Operations, maintenance, commissioning, procurement (and more) are all affected by this. You can be assured that one unplanned shutdown will probably cost less than getting your information nailed. So these costs are hurting your efficiency but you probably don’t know by how much, because you don’t know what good looks like and this makes it hard to justify the investment in your digital data.
The digital train is leaving the station and the volume of data that you’re going to need to deal with is going to grow exponentially. Let me start by saying that nailing your information management is not about the tools or systems (though there are some excellent ones available), in my experience companies will go out and spend a lot of money on a shiny new software package and maybe even roll it all up in a new program and expect all their troubles to be over.
The harsh reality is somewhat different: “Despite very significant expenditure, many businesses complain that benefits have been slow to be delivered, are difficult to quantify, and their asset managers still say that they do not have access to the information they need.”. The tools are part of the answer not the complete solution.
Having the correct processes in place will help you immensely too, but again these are part of the picture.
Standards form yet another piece of the pie, common frameworks give a level playing field for dealing with information. CFIHOS in Oil and Gas and BIM in the construction means their respective industries are making huge strides towards treating information in a standard manner. I’ve been involved with CFIHOS for a long time and the sheer volume of support from some of the largest companies in the world to make it work is incredible.
The real answers run much deeper than that though…
So to paraphrase the Spice Girls, what do you really, really want?
As someone who knows far more about this than me once put it ,“it’s not a technology problem its a people problem”. So maybe a good place to start is to try and solve the people problem.
How about from the outset, trying to default to open, making sharing everything wherever possible your opening stance. I don’t mean things that are commercially sensitive but your attitude should always be “lets share everything, what do I need to take out?” not “I’ll silo everything and decide what to share later”. If the military can do it, so can you, remember that Information is only of value if you give it to people who have the ability to do something with it, who is best placed to make that call, you or them?
The next step is to admit that nearly everything you do is a collaboration, you are not an island, your departments are not islands and neither are your projects, partners, vendors and stakeholders. Behave like that, all of your strategies, systems, tools, procedures need to facilitate collaboration wherever possible. If you are given two options of seemingly equal value, do the one that lets you share better.
Work with your suppliers and contractors, if you trust them enough to build and supply your equipment then maybe you should trust them enough to tell you what you really need to know about and not encumber them with yet another requirement that feels like more work for them. They know more about their kit than you do so ask them along for the journey, then it feels like their journey too and you’ll get more from them. This isn’t easy with multiple layers of contract between you and the actual supplier but they will value you for making the effort.
You should also let the idea of sharing pervade through your culture, you want your teams to define their value by what they share rather than what they know, that way this will feed down into all the other stakeholders including the external ones.
Most of all you really need to mean it;
- Choose tools that facilitate all this so that everyone can collaborate with ease
- Reward collaboration contractually
- Make your business processes drive sharing and your standards open and you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes
- Accept that this won’t happen overnight, it won’t be cheap or easy
The good news is that such a big culture change now has a common flag to rally around, as people are finally realising that the payoff is potentially huge from digital transformation.
Given the ease at which you can share information using digital tools it really isn’t about technology any more, your transformation comes from within.
Information management really is a state of mind, embrace it and find Zen.
