Letter 022 - What is an Information Ecosystem?
And other thoughts on narrative control & refinement
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It’s 2017, and my colleagues and I are sitting in a dimly-lit room somewhere in New York (our clients didn’t really love consultants, so they hid us on the most drab floor, in a room within a room). There was no AC, so we positioned cheap old fans to help maximize air flow into and out of the room.
As we all tried to hide the sweat (ew), we receive an e-mail announcing an upcoming organizational change. “Join us this Friday to hear more about the upcoming shift, as we position ourselves to take advantage of… ”, the message said. I started to sweat more. “What does this mean for me?” “Which group will I land in?" “Why are we doing this?”
It’s at this moment that you look to those around you and start sharing your thoughts and opinions. You all process this together, maybe feeling a sense of discomfort from the ambiguity. You go through emotional cycles for what this means, and all you have to help make sense of this is: (1) what you’ve been told by leaders, (2) what you’re hearing from other colleagues, and (3) what patterns you’ve observed in the past to inform what might happen going forward. And the third thing is what will propel you to create narratives (stories, explanations) to make sense of the incoming scenario (no, the scenario right in front of you).
This is your information ecosystem.
What is an information ecosystem?
I’m going to define what this term means to me, because I have yet to find a definition that is satisfying (please share one with me if you have it!).
Information Ecosystem = the local mass/collection of information around a given organization. There are information ecosystems for your family, your coworkers, your friends, your political ideology, etc.
Hone in on the word “collection” for a second. A better way to articulate this is that it’s never the totality of information around you. You never know everything. You always have, what economists like to call, imperfect (or “asymmetric”) information.
An Example
Here’s an example: you work at a large company (one with over 1000 employees). You work in a department within that company, let’s call it Engineering. In Engineering, there are 150 of you, and that means there are 850 people who are not in Engineering.
In this 1,000-person organization, there are 10 big bosses who manage teams who manage other teams. For each of these ten leaders, they have lines of communication with their leaders, who then play a game of telephone as they articulate what they heard from their boss.
This continues, over and over again down the chain of command, and all the while signal loss is occurring. As one person communicates something to one person, they capture most (but almost never all) of the message, which leads them to communicate inaccurately to others, which leads to the original message from the top to get diluted.
This process happens underneath each of the aforementioned ten big bosses, and before you know it you have many different narratives running around an organization. Some are harmless. Some are harmful. And by the time the big bosses are clarifying messaging, people already have their own narratives in their head, which are notoriously difficult to dislodge.
To be in any organization is to play a game of telephone. You hear something from your leaders, and someone (unintentionally) communicates that something imperfectly, and then the very structure and backbone of that original idea evaporates slowly as it travels from person to person.
Let me put this another way: each person’s information ecosystem is comprised of what they hear. But their ecosystem is imperfect and — because of that imperfection — original narratives get diluted and transformed into something that be misleading or just plain wrong. But there are steps you can take to help ensure this signal loss is minimized (more on that later).
Keeping your information ecosystem healthy against forces that will break it down
We have many things working against our efforts to deliver information that can withstand signal loss. Some big factors include:
A multi-tasking crisis where staying focused on one thing is extraordinarily difficult as many things battle for our attention
Our own personal biases + how we consume and process information in ways that confirms our own preconceived conclusions, err
Confirmation bias, and people hearing what they want to
General limitations on how much information we can retain
Many many more factors I’m leaving out here
But there are ways to keep your ecosystem healthy. Some successful tactics I’ve seen deployed include:
Keep messaging streamlined and simple. The more content/words ==> the less your colleagues will retain
Constantly appreciate bounded rationality. In layman’s terms, there is but so much that a person can hold in their brains at any given time
Having FAQs and 1-3 slide overviews for people to reference back to
Talking point documents to ensure people who are disseminating information are armed with tangible words to utilize
Having a group of people you communicate with regularly who will give you tips on how to better communicate points and (even better if they) find holes in your thinking or rationale, which can then be supplied back to leaders who can then revise their core points
tl;dr — feedback loops
Having a communications plan that outlines how you’ll talk about a topic both internally to your company and, if applicable, externally to the market
It’s when inconsistencies arise that trust breaks down ==> this leads to a whole other world of problems
Let’s go back to 2017. What happened after that initial e-mail?
Still sitting in that hot ass room. So what happened? Well, utter distraction. People ceased to be as productive on projects, we spent hours talking about — and processing — what this all meant for us. We had tense conversations with our managers, we asked pointed questions to somewhat-senior leaders who usually weren’t empowered or knowledgeable enough to provide us with clear answers. We felt impatient. We lost trust, and although we eventually got through it and most people were happy, the journey there was tumultuous. The org change took two months, and during those two months I know I wasn’t as effective at, well, anything.
This taught me a really powerful lesson about the importance of clear information and strong communicators. People who could both provide updates on the business and also understand and feel what their employees felt. I suspect it’s a big reason why broader work-oriented mediascape has been so focused on empathetic and compassionate leadership. It’s because the only constant is change, and we’re in an era where change happens faster than it ever has before. And what the communications plan won’t deliver for you is empathy, soul, warmth, optimism.
Ah….those soft factors. Let me update that definition of info ecosystems I provided earlier.
A better definition of “Information Ecosystem”
My first definition totally lacked any appreciation for the soft factors of information. The tone you feel, the emotions you glean from others.
My first definition: Information Ecosystem = the local mass/collection of information around a given organization.
My improved definition:
Information Ecosystem = the local collection of information in a given organization, where information can include numbers, images, narratives, and also the feelings generated by the communication of these pieces of information. An ecosystem, then, is also impacted by how information is communicated. By the tone deployed by the communicator as they introduce narratives and respond to feedback from others who are trying to process said narratives.
So what the heck does this mean for you?
It means that when you are communicating change, you shouldn’t just think about communication as a one-and-done game. Communications, in the context of work, means reinforcement. It’s identifying when you’ll initially communicate something. It’s arming others communicators with black-and-white / crystal clear points on how to communicate, because you can’t (and shouldn’t) always be there when others are going through their own journey processing change.
It’s ingesting feedback and making sure it gets back to the original narrative creators in an unfiltered way, so they can improve and communicate updates clearly. It means clearing up misconceptions quickly and head-on, and then checking in with people who will be honest to see, “did that land?”
It means being authentic when you miscommunicated something, and being as clear as possible in both verbal, written, and graphical form about what is truth and what is not. The penalty for not investing time to clear up misconceptions is that inaccurate ideas grow and grow until they becomes weeds that seep resources from the rest of the garden that is the place you work.
And one last point: weeds are going to appear in your garden. You are going to have to address them. They are unavoidable. I actually find this process of clarification to be extraordinarily healthy to re-earning trust + refining success pathways with quality feedback… But we should strive to minimize the presence of disinformation and misunderstanding (boy, I feel like this applies to way more than “work” as I re-read that sentence…).
I would love to hear how you contend with signal loss and unhealthy information ecosystems, and ideally suggestions if you have any! Just reply to this e-mail or leave a comment if you do have any thoughts.
Michael