Intelligence at the service of your enterprise.
1. INFORMATION — MATERIAL OF OUR EPOCH
Information is everywhere
Imagine..
7:30 in the morning.
Jean Martin wakes up to the sound of the radio transmitting a short news bulletin: «Unrest in the Caucasus, 30 dead; oil tanker shipwrecked off the coast of California — there is a risk of oil pollution of the coast; resignation of the general secretary of the Movement for Peace and Ecology throughout the world; a sharp increase in the prices of alcoholic drinks and cigarettes is planned next month».
8:00 am.
Family breakfast. Baby Jean-Luc, 6, refuses to eat his cornflakes because they don't have the chocolate coating he saw on TV adverts.
Jean Martin opens his local newspaper and scans the headlines: 'Statement by the Soviet Minister of the Interior on the unity of the republics; a communiqué from the French government on the rise in the prices of alcoholic drinks and cigarettes expected at noon; a representative of the Movement for Peace and Ecology throughout the world denies rumours of a possible split; controversy over the construction of a new regional motorway'.
Nothing really new compared to last night's television news and this morning's radio news programme.
8:30 a.m.
Jean Martin sets off in his car for the headquarters of the firm 'Trident', where he is director of the 'Mountain Leisure Products' department. (the company «Trident» is engaged in the production of sportswear and footwear).
On the way, he absentmindedly listens to the radio, which continuously broadcasts various interviews and commentaries: a discussion about the disagreements shaking the Movement for Peace and Ecology throughout the world; a commentary by a Sovietologist about the collapse of the empire in anticipation of a live speech by M.S. Gorbachev (thanks to the time difference), etc.
Stopping at a red traffic light, he contemplates a giant girl's face on an advertisement (3×4 m), urging him to drink beer.
At this point, his attention is suddenly drawn to the radio commentator's phrase: «Snow storm over.» Unfortunately, the end of the phrase is drowned out by the howl of the horn of the car following him, letting him know that the light is green.
His sharp, interested reaction to the word «snow» is due to the fact that this information is extremely important to him.
The sales of mountain footwear and clothing are directly dependent on the availability of snow. Although winter has been going on for over a month, not a single snowflake has fallen in the Pyrenees and the Alps. And without snow, there is no sales!
Irritated that he has missed the only piece of information that is important to him, Jean Martin quickly parks his car in the parking lot near the company building.
In the hall, he meets his colleague Brunet from the sportswear department and asks if he has heard anything about the snowstorm.
The colleague replies in the negative. Jean Martin hurries to his office and quickly looks through the economic newspaper he receives daily.
As he had expected, there was no weather report in the paper. Only one brief item caught his attention: 'A leak has revealed that the giant chemicals company Dubois in Nottingham is preparing to launch a revolutionary new textile material on the market in the coming weeks, our special correspondent in Brussels tells us.'Jean Martin registers this information in one of the corners of his memory. His irritation finally dissipates with the arrival of a cheerful secretary who brings mail.
After a few minutes of meaningless conversation, he learns from her that a snowstorm did indeed take place, but in the USA.
Our hero, Jean Martin, has just begun his working day, and he is already being bombarded with a powerful stream of various information.
Later, this will be supplemented by reading reports and professional journals, discussions with colleagues, phone calls, meetings.
On the way home, he will listen to the radio again.
After returning home, he will sort through his mail, which is at least 80% advertising: «Mr. Martin, we offer you a special subscription to the magazine Revue de Gestion du Patrimoine.»
At 8 p.m., the TV news magazine begins, and after a feature film, there will be the last nightly newscast. In addition, all this will be constantly interrupted by inserts advertising the merits of this or that product.
Nowadays, such an overabundance of information, much of it unsolicited and repetitive, creates a background noise of interference that is difficult to get rid of.
Back in 1973, a study was conducted in Japan that showed that each person is exposed to a daily flow of information equivalent to 3 million words, which is about the size of a 1000-page book.
The same work notes that the ratio between the information actually assimilated by people and the information transmitted by various media, even in the best case, and television is such a case, is 1:100.
To all this is added the process of globalization (acquiring a global scale), which introduces even more confusion into this mass of information.
Regional events related to everyday life appear on the same level, i.e. on a par with events in distant countries, which are not always easy to find on the map.
However, in this ocean of information there are individual pearls that must be found.
In our example with Jean Martin, such a pearl is information about the imminent appearance of a new textile material on the market.
How to fish for these pearls without drowning and without wasting all your time? This is the topic of this book.
Connecting information with the field of activity
Imagine hundreds of puzzle pieces piled haphazardly in a chest in the attic. This will give you a fairly accurate idea of the «raw» information that is bombarding you from all sides.
We are talking about a pile of junk, of no overall interest, in which, however, some valuable information is hidden.
Isolated information does not allow you to form a more or less complete picture of any event, just as a single element of a puzzle picture does not allow you to judge its full content, no matter how you turn it before your eyes.
Believing that by adding information to information you will inevitably understand the essence of the matter is like believing that by collecting more elements from a pile of jumbled pieces of different puzzles you will speed up the restoration of the enigmatic picture.
In other words, your patience may run out long before you find two joint elements of the picture, i.e. long before you manage to combine separate information messages into a single whole.
Thus, events taking place at the state level seem less and less understandable as the number of reports, interviews, roundtable discussions, etc. increases.
In January 1990, the International Herald Tribune published an article under the headline: «USA inundated with information from the USSR.»
The article reported that after a 45-year period of information famine, US government analysts were literally drowning in information coming from the USSR after M.S. Gorbachev came onto the scene.
And yet, all this information did not allow one to foresee the speed and scope of events in Eastern Europe and in the republics of the USSR.
Despite its large volume and diversity, this flow of information ultimately did not clarify anything.
It did not even allow experts to answer the most basic questions, such as the reasons for the resignation of a number of high-ranking officials.
Such insignificant results forced the heads of American intelligence services to declare: «We need new methods.»
If experience shows that information and understanding the essence of the matter are not synonymous concepts, then this means, apparently, that the formulation of the problem was incorrect: it is believed that information is an object that exists in the absolute, identical for everyone, but we must obviously proceed from the fact that we are talking about a structure that everyone builds for themselves in accordance with their needs.
Let's return to the example with Jean Martin.
Of all the messages he heard during his workday, he ultimately remembered only two. The first was about a snowstorm, and the second was about the arrival of a new textile material.
Why these two messages out of a thousand others?
Because they simply had a direct relation to the field of his activity, i.e. to the development and production of mountain footwear and clothing. The word «snow» meant «sales» for him, and «new textile material» meant «new clothing».
At the same time, the problems of the Peace and Ecology Movement throughout the world, as well as the tanker accident off the coast of California, were of no particular interest to him.
In other words, genuine information exists only if there is a preliminary intention (design), goal, project.
Intention predetermines an attitude, more or less conscious, to the analysis of the surrounding reality, which in turn is expressed in the awakening of attention, as a result of which a single word, object or event that is relevant to us is caught from a disordered set of signals.
That is why Jean Martin caught the word «snow» among a mass of information, despite his absent-mindedness at that moment.
Ultimately, true information is the result of the interaction of the pair intention — attention, and everything else is just background noise.
Imagine that you are in an unfamiliar city and you need to get on a train. Luckily, you met a policeman who will show you the way.
Hello, how do I get to the train station?
It will take you no more than 5 minutes. Walk along this street to the crossroads. At the crossroads, turn right onto Victor Hugo Boulevard. Then, at the monument, a large statue in the middle of the boulevard, the train station street begins on the left. The train station is at the end of this street, you will see it.
Thank you.
With this valuable information in hand, you set off. As instructed, you turn right at the first intersection and check to see if you are really on Boulevard Victor Hugo.
From now on, you have only one thought in your mind: to find the monument to the poet, so as not to pass by the station street.
The boulevard may be lined with trees, you may pass by the Galeries Lafayette department store — all this is of no interest to you (unless you are planning to go shopping).
All your attention is concentrated on the middle of the street until the monument finally appears.
This is the information that you lacked to achieve your goal, i.e. the train station.
Exercise.
Find in your memory cases when one word, image, name attracted your attention.
Try to restore the reason, i.e. to find out the intentions, the implicit request that caused such your attention.
Key provisions
If, as suggested, the starting point is the action being performed, the goal being pursued, and not the pseudo-information noise surrounding us, then the perspective changes radically.
It becomes possible to create an effective method of collecting and processing information without unnecessary loss of time, confusion and the risk of drowning, which will ensure that all the necessary and only necessary information is obtained.
Information is meaningless without connection to action.
Information = intention + attention.
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