Business Information Overload?

Just before a pilot takes his Boeing 747 into the air on a long journey, he gathers a whole bunch of information.

Before even climbing into the cockpit, he gathers information about the weather en route, and he gathers this from the local airport, the Internet, and talking to other pilots. Not only does he want to know if it is safe to fly, but he wants to know how many spare pairs of underpants he should pack.

As he approaches the aeroplane, he checks it out visually — are the wings hanging appropriately, are the engines attached to the fuselage by suitably large bolts, are there any bits sticking out that should not be, and are all the bits sticking out that should, is it the correct plane he is boarding, and so on?

Once seated in the cockpit, he checks that everything does indeed work – the accelerator, the brakes, the engines, the flaps, the cocktail trolley, etc. Far better to find this out before taking to the air where stopping for emergency repairs is not an option.

He then wires himself into a variety of communications networks so that he can keep track of what’s happening at the back of the plane when some hypoglycaemic demented diabetic starts waving a syringe around, and he can see (via radar) what’s happening in front of him, and he can listen to a variety of local airport specialists about what’s happening on the ground.

Keeping an aircraft in the air is all about information. And it is no different with keeping a business flying.

In fact, about the only thing different about business — to use the same aeronautical metaphor — is that the average business owner (you and me) typically believes that because he can do the job, he can also run the company which does the job. (That is a little like the aeronautical engineer who designed the wing thinking that he can pilot the aircraft.)

Business is about information. The more we have (and yes, it is painful and time consuming to assimilate) the better our chances of success. And the less we want it, the more we need it!

Information, however, comes at a cost. Way back in the bad old days, when milk was still delivered to your door in glass bottles with aluminium caps, it was the daily newspaper and the weekly magazine delivered to the door.

Nowadays, that’s too expensive, and too slow. One of the services I use allows me to download complete magazines and read them on my PC — with all of the advertisements! (About the quickest way to see what’s happening in technology is to read the advertisements, because they often tell you what’s coming, rather than what is available right now. I love vapourware!)

Immediate download also ensures that you get the material as it is published overseas, without waiting, without freight costs, without VAT, and before anybody else in southern Africa gets it. (The quickest way to get an agency for a new product is to be the first to ask for it!)

I used to feel guilty taking ” time off ” to read. I felt that every moment not in front of a client was wasted.

But the simple question is: if you don’t take time to assimilate information and to think, then who the heck is leading your organisation? Because it certainly isn’t you.

Which brings me, finally, to the point of this idea: if you are not going to take the immense amount of time it needs (to say nothing of the copious quantities of wine required) to sit back and think of new ideas of your own, maybe, like me, you should cheat a little bit and get the ideas quickly from other people? When I first read about a service that delivers digital magazines, I wasn’t particularly interested. I rather like the tactile feel of a magazine. However, the price of magazines in South Africa put me off a whole lot of them. So I signed up with the service,and every day, if there is any publication of theirs awaiting my urgent attention, (PC World, BusinessWeek, MacWorld, Play-Boy,etc.) it gets downloaded for me to browse through. The entire magazine is displayed: inserts, advertisements and all.

About the best digital enhancement that the format offers is that any website links are active — so you can simply click and go there. (In many respects this so much better than sitting ont he toilet trying to catch up on the pile of reading you know you should do, and then hobbling along with your underpants holding the bottom half of your legs together, while you desperately try not to leak, in search of the pen you vaguely remember was in the bathroom cupboard, so that you can make a note of an interesting website to visit later…)

One of this month’s magazines had a feature on new ways to use software –which led me to 2 web services which have since become indispensable, and which I have detailed in the Warrior forum..

• An online wordprocessing program that I now use more than Microsoft Word (because it allows me to generate output from an Apple, Windows, or Linux in a webpage format, a print page format, a Word document, or a PDF). In fact, this particular e-mail was generated using this very product.
• The other is an exceptionally simple project management tool that allows me to stay very closely in touch with my developers and partners all over the world.

The ecology of business means that somebody is always trying to steal your clients, your ideas, your technologies, and anything else that your business has which is of value. Your job is to win. This is very difficult when you choose the cloistered life of a Tibetan monk.

If you don’t have time to go fetch the magazines you should be reading – get them delivered to you. Check it out at www.zinio.com. If you don’t take the time to keep aware, then you’d better beware because some hungry little dastard is going to steal your lunch.