Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog

Part 2 in my Food for Thought series…

Early on in my professional career I worked as the Manager of Market Planning for BIS Banking Systems, a U.K.-based subsidiary of the now defunct NYNEX Corporation. That was back in the ’80s.

One of my earliest assignments was to input to the organization’s five-year strategic plan. BIS had never produced a five-year plan before, at least not to the exacting specifications of a U.S. monolith.

The project required my assessments of things like market size and potential for a variety of segments across international banking, computing and communications. Without the aid of anything remotely resembling the Internet, let alone search engines — or in Banking Systems’ case a library even — I took the task in my youthful stride thinking I could get away with semblance over substance.

Well, I was wrong. Expected to slice and dice markets with precise measurement and translate all that with something “strategic” left me stumped from the get-go. In short, I was well and truly buggered.

The best I could come up after six weeks of struggle was a presentation to my management that started out with the question: “How do you buy a small American bank?” to which the answer was, “You buy a big one and wait!”

My bosses were not amused although at the time it was a perfectly reasonable answer to a frequently asked question. I later found the reason for their displeasure was not because of my opening humor but because I couldn’t back it up with any facts. Go figure.

After a few more weeks of ducking and diving I finally managed to wangle an “information officer” using someone else’s headcount and swing some state-of-the-art stuff like LexisNexis and SideKick to keep her happy.

So began a two-year long infatuation with Veronica Daggit-I-Forget-Her-Last-Name.

Veronica was a wonderful catch. She introduced me to the Dewey Decimal Classification System and stayed late to help me understand the real use for index cards and bulldog clips. She showed me how to beguile an audience with qualitative and quantitative data, giving me practical tools to become the “Man-in-the-Know.” When it came to “data”, “content”, and producing “knowledge,” Veronica taught me how to suck it up and spit it out. Ah, Ronnie, Ronnie — not your typical matronly librarian-type, I can tell you!

In no time at all my approval ratings went from so-so to ten-plus. My management promoted me and gave Veronica and me an office with a door which we could close and conspire behind. The more authority and power I gave them the more they gave it back in the form of things like photocopiers and a library and subscriptions galore! The more I gave the more I got in return, the more they wanted.

One day I showed up for work and there was a nameplate on the door. Veronica and I were fixtures.

I kept the data-guzzling bosses happy. I fed them and they fed their higher-ups in turn. Everyone got a bite of something. I was the strongest link in a food chain where data, analysis and intelligence became increasingly valuable as it was passed along the corridors of power.

It wasn’t long before I was being asked to pass stuff along without sending it to the usual distribution list. My work was being stamped “Classified,” “Need to Know Basis,” and “Your Eyes Only.” I was not just the Man-in-the-Know now, I was the Man-in-the-Know who knew who knew what.

Fast forward…

In a world that is connected for immediate and unfettered access to huge volumes of “highly relevant data” the frustration has become one of information overload and quality control.

Today’s glut of information and the accelerated pace of delivery across multimedia and channels has left the present-day consumer disadvantaged, more so than we were 25 years ago. Then the scarcity of information meant that what was being brokered, managed and digested was valued at a premium all the way along the food chain. Its flow was carefully controlled as the source of economic, political and social power.

Information management — over and above archiving, storage and retrieval — used to be about making choices. Content preference and selection was based on need and usefulness not as it is today mostly on attention span and how long will it take to consume a quick snack.

Today, spoiled for choice, what choices are there in reality? Yesterday it was “I went to the well and the well was dry.” Now it’s, “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink!”

Social media in all its forms is flattening the hierarchies of information management and the bureaucracies it supports.

Privileged information — like privacy itself — is collapsing under the weights of transparency, authenticity, reputation management, personal branding and virtual access-on-demand. Open Source – or is it Open Sauce – makes a nonsense out of once infallible models. Copyright and intellectual property is up for grabs, see creative commons.

The business of information management has become a popular past time and now the lunatics are running the asylum. As the Internet has become an integral part of most people’s lives information management has become as much as sport as a science. Talk of Social bookmarking and tagging is commonplace conversation among everyday people connected in one big mash-up.

More than that, the balance of power continues to shift with technology enabling a new generation of giant-slayers and instant pundits and rank amateurs.

The lines between data, intelligence, content and pulp have been blurred by an everyman approach that leaves sorting stuff out to machines and programs for countering the deluge of spam. PageRank has become more important than the content itself. Optimization has trumped optimal use. We’ve lost sight of the value in having stuff on shelves and in folders, gathering dust.

Again, expected to make sense of the world with precise measurement and translate all that with something “strategic” I remain — like Sisyphus — well and truly buggered! At least in these more modern times I can take some comfort in being able to share all of this with you, right?

So, there you have it: The Man-in-the-Know who once knew who knew what now knows that he himself knows nothing…except that Veronica’s last name started with a “P” — um, I think. I really can’t remember!