The Ten Commandments for Business Failure - Don Keough [28]
A Canadian study of academics at universities across that country indicated 42 percent said they felt stressed by the constant barrage of information and communication coming their way; 58 percent said their ability to stay focused on their work had greatly diminished due to ICTs (information and communication technologies). Also, doctors from a number of medical schools are reporting that because people tend to talk louder on phones in order to “animate” their conversations, vocal strain and subsequent hoarseness are becoming a growing problem.
Obviously, there are some people who seem to be able to handle all this, mentally and physically. They even thrive and grow rich on it.
A Fortune magazine article sometime back reported that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has three monitors on his desk, synchronized so that he can drag items from one to another. One screen displays e-mail. The second screen shows the particular message that he is writing at that moment. The third screen is for a browser so he can search various sites.
Bill Gates is a pioneer of electronic communication. He is a genius, and especially a genius in the field of handling data. No one can measure the positive impact he has had on our global society. But for certain, he has brought us closer together… just a click away.
But for many of us mere mortals, however, ICTs far from freeing up time to actually focus on and think about what we are doing have frequently compressed time to stressful levels. The Dutch sociologist Ida Sabelis uses the word “decompress,” which is what divers have to do when they surface after very deep dives. After we dive deeply into all kinds of data, we definitely need time to decompress, to sit back and think deeply about the issues before us.
It’s said, “You can never have too much data.” But instinctively, you and I know that simply is not true. If you have ever been pulled up short in the toothpaste department of your local drugstore, you know the problem: Colgate alone has fifteen or sixteen different varieties, all, apparently, providing some slightly different type of teeth cleaning, teeth whitening, and cavity prevention. That’s just too much data to process.
Even more daunting, consider the process of buying something a bit technical, such as a new phone or a TV set. The choices are wonderful and totally mind boggling—for some of us, anyway.
Do you want a phone that takes pictures, stores music, surfs the Internet, sends and receives text messages, or displays the latest soap opera? All you need to know is there. Just go to any one of thousands of Web sites or talk to the friendly technologists at one of the many electronics retailers. There’s so much to know, it can be difficult. (Smart salespeople know this, so they quickly try to narrow down your selection. Show me a dozen ties and I’m confused. Show me three and I usually pick the blue one.)
In the early 1970s a psychologist gave horse-racing handicappers varying amounts of information on various horses—past racing records, the weight they carried, breeding, and so on. Interestingly, the handicappers did worse on their predictions when they had forty pieces of information than when they had only five. It’s true that in many, many situations less is more!
A global network of everything connected to everything already exists. Machines are constantly talking to machines. Groups are connected to groups, all sharing data. To be productive, however, the whole vast array needs structure. A business network may not have some kind of tangible structure, like a building, but at some point there must be some kind of guidance to keep the flow going in the right direction, toward the right goals.
Someone or some few people must actually apply wisdom and thought about the direction and goals. Someone must have a vision of the future. The data alone do not get you there. In fact the data are often conflicting because a group consensus is altogether different from an