Knowledge mastery

Building knowledge into systems

As a hobby systems thinker i try to come back to the idea about the position of information and knowledge in systems. There is a great deal of examples in nature where information flow is built excellently into systems through interconnections. For example when it’s dry tree’s closes it’s pores to the leafs to preserve water and that information is passed via signals from the roots. Systems in nature are typically packed with these inborn information and feedback loops that control it’s behavior. Business systems are social constructs and not always have the same inborn astute information flows. Acting more or less in blind can be the reality for many workers as they go about their professional and personal activities. This can be costly to businesses, they may keep bringing water all the way to the leafs, even in very dry periods with potentially large consequences to follow. Business systems need appropriate knowledge, signals and information flows that automate and guide behavior that is in line with the long-term vision of the management.

But how are we going to built knowledge into the business systems?

Many processes and ideas have been proposed and most of them share some common sense approaches such as originating the product in good understanding of business needs and systems.

Basically we need to understand the system. To stay within the analogy, we need to understand the tree, what important information it needs and the consequences of poor knowledge. For example the state of the soil have major informational utility and dry soil means the recommended action is to preserve water. For a business the important information may the state of the customers, vendors, employees, sales and so on. There are many ways to capture this information and with digital applications finding it’s way into every business process, data is usually generated as a result. Business environments are not static, they are dynamic. New technologies that can learn to learn from data are well suited for such an environment.

From there we can design the information flow, the signals that are part of the system. Humans are good at understanding and reading visual cues and patterns and so if we can present facts in figures we’ve come along way. That’s why visual intelligence tools are much needed for every business. The result could be a dimensional model built on the Kimball methodology which is an excellent way to think about puzzling pieces of information together for analytics.

Being data-driven seems sometimes overused but the idea is sound. Understand that important decisions really benefit from having proper access to knowledge which can be a product of raw data, a knowledgeable co-worker or a great book.

Please make a comment on the post about what you think and other topics you think i could explore and come back with.

Till next time.

Kasper