Turning News Into Knowledge

As a business analyst and programmer, I love to figure out how things work. When I see a garbage truck rolling down the street, I don’t see garbage-men and trucks; I see a well thought out process that prevents the city from seizing up and smelling bad.

I also see information the same way — especially the news and how it affects organizations. Many people will simply check Google News once in a while or read the newspaper to find out what’s going on. Others will use a news service and monitor the news with set keywords and actually try to keep the decision-makers informed about what’s going on.

However, many organizations lack a plan and routine to keep information flowing in a steady, manageable stream to help ensure decision-makers and other team members are adequately informed. Information and intelligence are essential for businesses to operate, and, like garbage collection, are time-sensitive. If garbage sits for too long, it stinks and clutters the streets impeding movement, eventually grinding things to a halt. If information sits for too long, opportunities are lost and an organization could end up headed in the wrong direction.

So even though an organization might be collecting and and analyzing media coverage, the information still needs to be properly disseminated and communicated in a timely fashion.

The only way to ensure this is to create processes and routines for managing your media coverage, just as cities develop plans to move garbage.

People within an organization can’t simply be presented with monthly or quarterly reports. Yes, like scheduled recycling days, monthly and quarterly reports are essential to understanding what is going on. But there still needs to be a steady flow of information and it needs to be filtered and monitored on a daily basis. In this day and age, with the prevalence of intranets, extranets, and most importantly, email, there are no excuses for people not being kept informed on a daily basis. In the business world, it’s all about taking advantage of opportunity and avoiding missteps.

The same way your city has recycling bins, trash cans, regular pickups, special pickups, etc., to keep things moving, organizations need daily processes and routine to keep the information flowing so they can properly function and grow.