Following on from a previous post about the value of information, it seems relevant to ask how long any value created lasts.
We are all familiar with the notion of the ‘1/2 life’. The time it takes for radioactivity of an element to decay by 1/2. Uranium 238 has a 1/2 life of several billion years.
What about the 1/2 life of information?
The 1/2 life of a daily newspaper is arguably 1 day, today’s news is ‘tomorrows fish wrapper’. For 99.9% of blog posts, and most other so called ‘content’, it is about 2 seconds. This seems odd in what is supposedly the ‘Information age’, why is the life so short in most cases, and what make the difference for the 0.1%?
The answer seems to be: It depends on the utility of the information, which is partly a function of the ‘friction’ or resistance which is applied to its transmission.
Businesses, and most institutions are structured to be top down in functional silos, a system that evolved before digitisation of information arrived at our inboxes. This enabled the scaling of effort and the most efficient allocation of resources. A 20th century solution to the challenge of information transfer and leverage.
In the 21st century, with digitisation, the structures of the 20th century are redundant. They are simply too slow to be competitive in an environment where the action happens at digital speed on the ‘front lines’ of customer interaction. It takes too long for the siloed decision making processes to work. Customers will now move quickly to someone who is able to satisfy their need on the spot.
We have to turn our power structures upside down, and give the front lines the authority to make on the spot decisions within a much broader remit than was previously the case.
This creates huge complications for organisations, as the status quo is upset. The power people at the top have worked to achieve all their lives is diluted, and for those at the bottom, suddenly they are being tasked to take decisions that last week were being referred up the chain.
There is a driver of activity, always present, but to date well in the background for most. This is the ‘operating rhythm’ of the market in which they compete. When their decision cycles are slower than the operating rhythm of the market, the market will go elsewhere, or at the very least, opportunities will be lost.
Getting ‘inside’ the operating rhythm of your market, being able to respond quicker than the market reacts, is an emerging key to strategic success.
The 1/2 life of information is now in the hands of others, those who really count, by being customers.
That is why the OODA loop, conceived by US fighter pilot John ’40 second’ Boyd in the 60’s is so relevant to 21st century competition.
