Knowledge management: Can information be counterproductive?: February 25, 2002 issue of New Thinking

February 25, 2002 New Thinking:
Knowledge management: can information be counterproductive?

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February 25, 2002

Knowledge management: can information be counterproductive?

By Gerry McGovern

Historically, many societies and economies suffered from a lack of information. Today, information flows at an unprecedented rate. We have thus moved from scarcity to, in some cases, glut. How to deal with too much information is a major challenge for knowledge management.

Knowledge is what we know. Information is the communication of knowledge. In every knowledge exchange, there is a sender and a receiver. The sender does the informing; the communicating. The receiver takes in the information and, hopefully, turns it into knowledge.

There are three potential responses the mind can have with regard to dealing with the quantity of information received. To explain them, some analogies are useful:

The cup
The bottomless pit
The throat

Think of the mind as a cup and think of information as water. You pour information into the cup (mind). After a while, the cup becomes full. If you pour in more information, the cup will overflow and the information will be wasted.

The idea here is that the mind has a certain capacity to retain knowledge. After a certain amount of knowledge has been retained, the mind is full. Pouring in more information serves no productive purpose.

Here, the mind is like a bottomless pit. You can pour in endless amounts of information and the mind will happily convert it into knowledge.

Here, you are pouring information down the throat. If you pour in too much information, the mind gets sick and confused. Pouring in more and more information begins to affect the knowledge that is already there.

The 'patient' thought they had understood the subject. But as they are bombarded with information that they don't feel able to assimilate, their previous knowledge is undermined. All this new information begins to 'choke' what the person felt they knew about the subject. More information results in more confusion.

Which of the above analogies is your mind like? If you are lucky, you are like the bottomless pit, with an endless ability to consume information. If you are unlucky you are like the throat, and you are feeling increasingly suffocated by more and more information.

Most of us are probably like the cup. We have a certain knowledge threshold. We spend time acquiring information about a subject which we turn into knowledge. Over time, this knowledge hardens into opinion and attitude. In such situations, much new information about the subject is ignored and flows off us.

The quality of the information is, of course, a vital factor. Unfortunately, much Internet information exhibits a quantity approach. However, even where quality information is concerned, there can still be too much of a good thing.

Time is the oil of the new economy. Attention is the car. Knowledge is the destination. Information is the map.

It is an increasing challenge to get people into their 'attention cars.' Unfortunately, too many communicators of information are driving people around in the wrong direction, wasting their time and attention.

I'd like you to ask yourself the following question: 'How much of my information is getting to its knowledge destination?'

Gerry McGovern

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