Shotgun Communication
For many organizations, delivery of information about emerging products and services is undisciplined and chaotic. A mix of relevant, irrelevant, and erroneous content ends up scattered across the Web and overlaps from page to page, author to author, and medium to medium. With this shooting-from-the-hip delivery, information arrives as diffused and insulated content from the individual authors who provide it. The content may meet the bare-bone necessities for each revenue center, but requires each department and author to research and write independently rather than collaborating to provide a full spectrum of knowledge. As for the customer, it is up to him or her to sort it all out.
After new product releases or service updates, a torrent of disparate corporate information follows based on the perceived requirements for each team to show their worth. Sales collateral, Marketing webcasts, Support knowledgebase articles, Engineering release notes, and internal reference guides from formal Documentation teams stagger out like drunken sailors looking for their ship after a Cinderella liberty. Add to this meandering information all of the informal input from bloggers, social sites, forums, and independent Web sites, and you have a fog of information to stumble through to find real knowledge and employ best practices for purchased products and services.
I think of this as shotgun communication, the haphazard delivery of content to meet perceived company sales and engineering needs rather than furnishing the user/client/customer with focused knowledge to meet THEIR needs. It’s quite easy to see how this happens. The intersection of old-style corporate structure and politics crossing with the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies puts pressure on everyone to show their worth by publishing their own information (not to mention increasing layoffs that pit team against team). Free social networks and blogging is expected to support the formal content, if it can be controlled and exploited. The result is a wide pattern of overlapping basic information that rarely meets the real-world knowledge needed by the customer.
Resolving this scatter gun information delivery means reinventing how an organization marshals it resources and collaborates with employees, vendors, and customers to capture, share, and render information as real knowledge for all stakeholders. Those companies who understand that knowledge is the basis of their products, services, and processes will win market share in the end. Time has proven this over and over again.
Knowledge is the Fountainhead
The wellspring of knowledge internal to the company and its employees gives a company advantages over its rivals, whether in manufacturing processes, research and development innovation, or by identifying new market opportunities. All products and services are an instantiation of that knowledge.
For example, software companies are not in the “coding” business, but in the business of automating transactions and providing online tools to expedite tasks for a specific industry or market. Sales teams need to understand the needs of their sales channels to make a compelling case before customers invest with them. Manufacturers stay in business because they have a workforce with the expertise and experience to produce relevant products and meet market changes.
For all organizations, it is the products and services they provide that come from this base of knowledge. It is unfortunate that most managers pay such little attention to becoming a learning organization that fosters knowledge retention and coordinates information management internally to its employees or externally to its customers. It is, after all, the fountainhead from which all else springs.
It reminds me of the railroad parable: Seeing revenues fall in the 1980’s due to lagging rail shipments, the railroads finally realize that they are not in the Train Business. They are in the Transportation Business. This means they not only need to lay track and run the trains on time, but they also need to solve the larger transportation needs facing their customers. The railroads realized they needed to be experts at moving freight, and trains are just a part of that knowledge. Providing end-to-end solutions requires a more focused understanding of customer needs, the options available, and the expertise to employ this real-world knowledge.
That’s basically where we are now in this transitional phase of the Information Age: Knowledge leads to viable products and services for the customer. Not the other way around. Feedback can then follow from case studies and customer input and postings to round out the knowledge for implementation and usage .
A Real-life Example
As a seasoned veteran of the information wars, I can see a lot of examples of piecemeal attention to knowledge management, and I’m probably responsible for much of it myself throughout my career. Erratic information is commonplace and not exceptional by any means. The following example is focused on the Dell Management Console released in the spring of 2009, but can be applied to their competitors at HP, Apple, Lenovo, and all others.
The Dell Management Console competes in the market as software for a unified IT management system to administer all types of computer devices for Dell hardware products. To find information about downloading, purchasing, implementing and deploying the system, you need to go to all the following Web sites, knowledgebases, Webcasts, documentation, and other resources to get the needed information. Then you have to make sense of it as usable knowledge.
The following list of information sources and authors only skims the complete content model available in the cloud for this product, but it stands as an example of shotgun communication employed by most large corporations. As you read it, ask yourself these questions:
If you are an executive: Add up the cost of education writers, support technicians, product managers, marketing communicators, illustrators, contract writers, videographers, developers, quality assurance writers, and all others who are paid to deliver information. You have to ask yourself: Isn’t there a better and more economical strategy?
If you are a customer: Do you really have the time to search through all of this stuff? And if you do, can you bring it together by yourself to create content that meets your real life needs? Or should you just call in the high-paid experts for a consult? You had better check your bank account first.
And my position: I can’t stand it. The real information asked for by customers does not actually exist. Information about best practices and real-life strategies is missing from this everything-including-the-kitchen-sink model of information. It is the faucet that actually makes the kitchen sink worth the money and effort.
|
Information type |
Information location |
Author |
| Marketing Web page | Dell site | Marketing Web Designer |
| White papers | Dell white paper site | Product Manager |
| Dell Documentation | Dell manuals | Technical writers |
| Wiki | Dell TechCenter Wiki | Engineers, users, product support |
| Interactive Training videos | Interactive training | Tech Alliance Mgr and approved voluntary writers |
| Webcasts | Registration | Product Managers and liaisons |
| Spec sheets | Marketing PDF | Marketing |
| Dell Forums | Dell Systems management | Tech support |
| Add’l Dell videos | DMC Overview | Dell product and technical managers |
| Professional Services | For profit services | Professional consultants, sales engineers |
This is just the top level of information. Because the Dell Management Console was built by Symantec, in-depth content requires the user to access these additional sites on a completely different domain.
|
Information type |
Information location |
Author |
| Altiris Documentation | Multiple guides for products | Multiple technical writers |
| Altiris Knowledgebase | Talisma knowledgebase | Support |
| Altiris Web site | Marketing Web site | Marketing |
| Symantec Forums | Symantec Connect forums | Support and support stringers |
| Symantec Articles | Symantec Connect articles | Product managers |
| Symantec Blogs | Symantec Connect Blogs | Everyone |
| Symantec Videos | Symantec Connect Videos | Sales, marketing, and account managers |
| Symantec Training | Symantec product training | Education writers |
| Altiris 7 Planning Guide | Symantec Planning and Implementation Guide | QA personnel |
| KB link to 50 required docs | Compilation of links | Support engineer to just identify all information |
| Symantec white papers | Symantec white papers | Product marketing, Marketing writer, et al |
| Symantec yellow books | Symantec books | Software engineers and QA |
The problem of mismanaged information and lack of knowledge is readily apparent to anyone who’s researched a recently purchased product or service. In future postings, I’m going to discuss the remedy for the shotgun approach to knowledge management. The solution is Semantic Web, linked data, aggregation, content mashups, and real-time Web strategies.
For additional postings on the failures of business knowledge (and business intelligence), see these:
November 5, 2009
· 
Michael Hiatt · 
6 Comments
Tags: Information management, knowlege management, Linked data · Posted in: Contextual Data, Information, Information management, Knowledge management, Linked data
6 Responses
About Mashups and Linked Data | Mashstream - November 16, 2009
[...] Shotgun Communication: Haphazard information distribution from disparate and insulated teams within an organization makes it hard for the customer to find usable knowledge. [...]
The Myth of Single-Source Authoring | Mashstream - November 18, 2009
[...] teams rather than the outside-in best practices and innovative uses needed by the customer. See Shotgun Communication for an in-depth view of corporate information problems and [...]
Meshing Information and Mashing Functionality | Mashstream - November 24, 2009
[...] Shotgun communication. Companies wrestle with all of their diverse content when releasing products and service from the different R&D, technical support, marketing, and writing teams in individual silos. All of this overlapping information needs to be brought together to identify cost savings and get the right information in front of the various types of customers (prospective customers, customers needing best practices, upsell customers, internal employees, et al). Example: See my posting on this issue and an example of shotgun communication. [...]
Evolving as a Content Strategist | Mashstream - November 30, 2009
[...] today. And somewhere along the line the executive will question the costs and overlapping effort of shotgun communication that occurs each time a product or service is [...]
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The Mashstream Projects | Mashstream - January 30, 2010
[...] platform. Factors: Currently, sales engineers, implementers, and customers wade through shotgun communication from software companies or write their own content for usage of disparate management tools. During [...]
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