"But what is it you DO?" Getting to simplicity in a complex world
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

New results in the fourth annual economic impact survey suggest normalisation of staffing and budget levels. These levels have required a fundamental change in service delivery. Leveraging cuts to create service enhancements rather than service reductions is one opportunity out of a difficult situation, but it requires information managers to communicate value despite the complexities of their offering.

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I'm finishing the first pass on analysing data collected for the fourth annual economic impact study that FreePint Research conducts in collaboration with research sponsor J. J. Keller. We started this project soon after the recession hit, and the data from the first two years on staff reductions and budget cuts were pretty grim. 

By Year Three we started to see stabilisation. And now, in Year Four, the data suggest a "normalisation" of staffing levels and content budgets, with concomitant changes in ways of working and approaches to licensing and purchasing of content.

Survey respondents over the years have reported one of two approaches to staff reductions in the information function:

• Service reduction: A basic zero-sum game, in which fewer staff mean that less information work can be done.
• Service enhancement: Creating efficiencies through technology and automation and pushing more lower-level work to end users so that remaining staff can focus on higher-value stuff.

It's a lucky (and savvy) organisation that can cultivate service enhancement, even in difficult times. It's not always possible, given an organisation's specific context, budget or culture. But there's also no doubt that being able to do so positions information work (not to mention the organisation) more effectively for long-term success.

Choosing enhancement

How can information managers position themselves to choose enhancement over service reduction? This jujitsu move requires an environment in which the fundamentals of what the information function provides the organisation are understood and then valued. 

Unfortunately, survey respondents do not seem to be well-understood within their organisations. When asked to rate their agreement with the statement: "Other departments understand the work the information staff do", nearly 60% (out of 250 responses) selected the lowest two ratings.

If not understood, the work cannot be valued. 

Criteria for understanding

A core challenge for helping colleagues understand information work is that it is complex. It's relatively easy to describe what a "researcher" does; it's quite a bit more difficult to explain the many threads of expertise that go into providing a comprehensive information service to an organisation.

In today's world, information service is not so much about delivering information -- any search engine, smart phone and 12-year-old can do that. Rather, it's about helping information flow (or stopping the flow) to bring strategic value to an organisation and have a positive impact on business outcomes.

That's complex. When asked "What is it you DO?" (even implicitly), an information professional has to be ready with a specific, easy-to-understand statement that focuses on tangible business value.

How do we help?

While working through my first analysis of the survey results, I couldn't help comparing the data to work we constantly do within FreePint to turn complexity into simplicity.

Over the years, we've developed several product offerings designed to meet specific needs within an organisation for increasing the value of its information resources and workers. Left to grow organically, the collection of FreePint Family resources would easily become unwieldy. 

Still, the diversity of resources can feel overwhelming. It's only when we better understand what you want that we can match the right resource to the job.

To support the process, we now have a simple online form, "How can FreePint help?". Complete this form to tell us what information-related challenges and interests you have, and we'll let you know how we can support you.

And perhaps that's the best possible starting-point, for all of us who have complex offerings, diverse stakeholders and a strong desire to create value. The right question isn't "Do you know what we do?" but "How can we help?"

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