Keeping Current/Book Review

BARRIE RICHARDSON

“THE BLACK HOLE BETWEEN DATA AND KNOWLEDGE”

Information Anxiety by Richard Saul Wurman Doubleday, 1989 352 pages; $19.95

One of the practical ideas in Richard Wurman’s newest book, Information Anxiety, is that writers and speakers ought to get directly to the point they want to make. This approach saves time and energy and reduces the anxiety associated with suspense. And so, I’ll take the author’s advice and state right off that if I were to recommend five books for managers to read this year, this book would not be on my list. If I extended that list to twenty, it would still be a marginal selection. Yet, there are several ideas in the book that are poweh l and useful, and the application of any one of them is worth many times the price of the book.

What is information anxiety? Wurman asserts that information

anxiety is produced by the “ever

Barrie Richardson is Dean of the School OfBusiness andSamuel Guy Sample Profes- sor of Business Administration at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. LA.

widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand. It is the black hole between data and knowledge and it happens when information doesn’t tell us what we want or need to know.”

His definition seems to suggest two different problems. The first is the supposed gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand. But what does this mean? If a person believes that J.I.T. is primarily a system to reduce inventories in a manufacturing plant, then he is wrong; but why would this produce anxiety? Most stockbrokers do not really under- stand the economics of capital mar- kets, and many believe they can consistently pick winners. Yet their knowledge gap may not constitute information anxiety. Perhaps igno- rance would be a better word. And all of us are ignorant about lots of things.

The second concept in his defini- tion has been experienced by any- one who has ever been given poorly prepared printed instructions on how to assemble a grass-seed spreader or a toy truck. We feel stupid and get angry because we

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can’t put the dumb thing together. In this case, we have information, but we can’t make sense out of it. This is, indeed, infomation anxiety.

There is no doubt that the sheer amount of information we face each year is immense and growing. We receive pages of computer print- outs each week and our “In” baskets are filled with reports and journal articles. New films, plays, television shows, and books appear daily. Furthermore, video recorders, tele- phone sets, food processors, and tape players have the capacity to do all sorts of things, but we often don’t take full advantage of them because we don’t understand their instruc- tion books. Our lives are filled with meetings, mail, and deadlines. Many feel as if they are drowning in data. But merely coping with this flood of information is not enough. We as managers need not only to keep from drowning in information, but also to make clear sense out of these data and focus on the right things to do. What we need, says Wurman, is a deeper understanding of basic organizing principles that will help us convert data into useful information.

Creating order Information is not useful, appli-

cable, or appropriate if we cannot gain access to it. Wurman notes that he is in the “understanding busi- ness.” An architect, he has also been a teacher, urban planner, adminis- trator, and entrepreneur. He has written forty-five books in the last twenty-eight years, and has recently

turned his immense creative and intellectual talents to helping people make sense out of ordinary things such as telephone directories, city maps, and railway schedules. Wur- man is not satisfied with order, “if the order creates information anxi- ety.” Here are some of the ideas that he believes can help individuals create order and avoid information anxiety.

Al l information (dictionaries, menus, ideas, inventories, annual reports, places, historical events, stories, etc.) can be organized in onlyfive ways. These are by (1) cate- gory, (2) time, (3) location, (4) alphabet, and (5) continuum. There is no one, right way to organize information. By considering chang- ing the format, a manager may de- velop a more useful approach. This simple but powerfd insight may be the most significant concept in the book. A factory, for example, canbe organized in several ways, and by changing our focus-by keeping our minds flexible-we can arrange and rearrange data and find new insights. This creative process can- not be done by computers, which are far, far better at processing informa- tion than at perceiving.

Computers are not models of the human mind. You and I think with ideas-not with data. Furthermore, our minds interact with others in conversations and these verbal ex- changes-mlike computer print- outs and memos-allow us to re- duce information anxiety. Interac- tions at meetings, over lunch, and in

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social groups allow for refinements, clarifications, and improved under- standing. Peters’ M.B.W.A.- management by walking around- is a subset of the same simple but powerful idea.

Giving good instruction is an art that all managers can learn to do better. Sony may make a good VCR and Apple a good microcomputer, but they are not that good at teaching us how to use them. In both cases they forgot what it is “to not know.” Every job in every office and plant could be improved if we made only modest improvements in instruct- ing. For example, Xerox’s instruc- tions for use of copy machines are almost “idiot proof,” and most of us appreciate it. Compare this with using the public library or filling out a tax return.

A voiding in formation landmines In his book Wurman also points

out several landmines in the infor- mation field that lead to misunder- standing or anxiety. Three main ones to watch for :

Unnecessary exactitude. When in- formation is presented in too much detail, it is confusing. Accountants do this all the time when they carry unit-cost figures out to four decimal points. For most purposes, rounding off is no sin. If a factory is 50,132 square feet, 50,000 is good enough. Saying it is as big as ten football fields might be even better.

Chinese-dinner memory dys- function. Chinese meals don’t stick

to your ribs. The same can be said about much of the information given in industry and schools. We often have total memory loss one hour after learning something. If you want someone to remember some- thing important, avoid swamping him or her with data.

The expert opinion syndrome. This is the tendency to believe that the more expert opinions we get, the better our decisions will be. Most experts, however, come with their own biases or way of seeing the world. This is just as true for sur- geons as it is for financial experts. Sam Walton had no expert consulta- tion on his vision for mass retailing, and Henry Ford’s experts told him he couldn’t produce a car for less than $l,OOO in 1920.

Summary In Chapter 13 Wurman offers

a practical approach to improving communication by learning how to make clearer maps. Tables, charts, graphs, income tax forms, and appli- cations, are all, in a sense, maps- and in many cases they confuse us and cause anxiety. In business and in all walks of life, maps need to be seen as mirrors that reduce, distill, and exaggerate reality. In other words, they should capture the sali- ent aspects of reality that otherwise would be confusing.

Igormation Anxiety features a conversational writing style, ap- pealing graphics, and clever mar- ginal notes. Each chapter is self- contained, so that, as in a cookbook or a collection of short stories, you

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can turn to any chapter without needing any background informa- tion. The twenty-page table of con- tents is the most thorough outline I have ever seen in a book. In fact, one should spend ten or fifteen minutes reading it before going on to any of the chapters.

The potential for being a best seller is most certainly here. The title is catchy and this is the type of book that people tend to pick up at an airport or at a mass-market bookstore in a shopping mall. Yet, Wurman’s organization is somewhat confusing. Not predi- cated on any theoretical model or theory, the book is a collection of ideas, concepts, metaphors, stories, parables, and pictures-in short, maps of how the real world

might be thought about. But to thoroughly explain his topic-the reduction of anxiety due to data overload-he needs a string on which to place his pearls.

Overall, Information Anxiety is spotty. Some of the chapters are full of practical ideas; others are less pregnant. The book is, however, an easy read-often fun and never dull. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Information Anxiety is that it doesn’t pretend to offer any quick fixes for the information overload problem. The author knows that knowing how to make sophisticated choices and learning how to ask imperti- nent, but relevant, questions are two skills that take a long time to develop.

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