Data - Information - Knowledge: a triad
The harmony of a triad:
Data Information Knowledge
The harmony of a triad: Data Information Knowledge
Not only in music is the harmony of triads an important element of style improving our well-being and good feelings.
We find such triads in management studies and in our daily lives. One of these triads is related to figures that are regularly used to measure results or dedication.
William Hewlett once said: You only can manage what you measure, and what you measure gets done! Many of the so-called KPIs used in our companies follow this sentence, at least the first half of it.
An absolute prerequisite for measuring and therefore management, are numbers. If many of them are collected in a table or spreadsheet, Microsoft has told us that these are called data.
To alter data into information, data need to be displayed graphically. For the mostly optical people it appears to be easy to extract or have them understand a specific and clear informational message using data for a graph.
A companys product strategy can easily be displayed and supported with such information. Acknowledging that the details of a growth-strategy vary significantly from others the creation of information from data can well be a challenge. Questions like: Does this information mirror our strategic objectives? or Will this information point into the right strategic direction? should be a mandatory part if you want to support a coherent and consistent strategy.
The third tone of the triad becoming ever more important reflects the question How can I create knowledge out of this information for me or my company. They say, we are living in the era of knowledge today. But where is the knowledge of my company?
Does it make sense if knowledge is stored in the heads of a few or should it not be made available for many? How can knowledge, being in the heads of a few, be made accessible to others in the same organisation? At the end the question is left how we handle our individual knowledge or how we can transfer all this information into knowledge accessible by all concerned.
The necessary pre-conditions, some call that IT-systems, are available, allowing us to intone the valuable and value adding triad, transforming data into information and at the end create accessible knowledge for a whole organisation. Pitifully this triad only can rarely be enjoyed yet.
All the best for 2010, Hanno@Innov8.de