More information does not always make for better decisions

220 years ago today in 1789 the United States, then a country in its infancy, concluded its first national elections for President.  A momentous day not only in the colonies but around the world as the experiment of self-rule was put to test with approximately 39,000 people determining their next leader.  And yet questions were raised then and now of how well informed could these citizens be on a candidate and their positions before an election.  Newspapers were the primary source of information but the farther from the capital one was, the more dated and murky information became.  It was not unusual for rumors of major events including even deaths of national leaders to circulate for months at a time until corrections were made.  Even more alarming was the state of affairs that based on the political bias of the owner/editor of a paper, articles would vastly differ even in a single city changing entire facts to fit their headlines.  The question must have been raised how can people intelligently vote without the information to make informed decisions? 

And how does all of this relate to corporate decision making?

We move now to today’s society where thanks to tremendous technology innovation we no longer have the problem of lack of timely information but rather a deluge of it.  This latest election brought forth every communication vehicle available ranging from traditional newspaper, TV and radio to the innovative podcasts, posted user videos, social networks, twitters and blogs.  The question of what to trust was buried under the question of simply what to pay attention to.  But making decisions based on potentially biased or dated newspaper articles in the 1790s has not evolved as far as we might hope to our trust in individual posted blogs or videos in 2009.

Today all of us as managers or users make decisions affecting our business or lives using information from variety of sources both within our companies and beyond.  It is up to us to filter through the information that we believe most accurate and will help us make the most informed beneficial decision.  Perhaps we need to take a step back and examine our information sources and challenge their experiences and data.  Based on trust in our co-workers, time spent developing and contributing to shared work spaces or internal video sharing sites could dramatically change our data gathering.  Ever wonder if the left hand of the company knows what the right hand is doing?  Today Cisco is using web 2.0 tools like an internal Wikipedia and video sharing called c-vision to help take trusted sources and share with our peers hopefully leverage best practices or lessons learned.  Companies that invest in these type of internal sharing tools are positioning themselves to enable all levels of employees to make better decisions.

While collaboration takes many forms, sometimes the most basic of information sharing from those you trust can be the most useful.  What would it have been like in 1789 if your own opinions were only shaped by those who lived within the 2-5 mile radius around your house or farm?  Or today within the 30-40 ft around your cube or office?  We have the technology to expand that radius of information sharing now it is up to us to choose and share wisely.   

Posted by Matthew Stein at 10:56AM PST