Competency: Mine InformationIntroduction:
In almost every thinking project, we’ll need to engage with some information and identify important elements contained within it. We call this ‘mining information’, and use a mining metaphor to help understand it.
There are three basic sources of information.
Information from the world –
This is information which exists in a medium outside of someone’s brain and is assessable by others: Spread sheets, surveys, computer reports, etc.
Information from other people –
Information that comes directly from another person: Interviews, group discussions, conversations, focus groups, etc.
Information from yourself. –
This typically means introspection to reflect on our thoughts, our feelings and our experiences. Each of these carries its own potential and challenges and are so important that we have designated them sub-sets of the main competency. So, we have Competency: Mining information – W, Mining Information – OP, and Mining Information-Y. Let’s look at each:
Sub-Set: Mine Information-W Mining information from the world.
By this, we are referring to information that exists on it’s own, without the need to consult someone else to interpret it. Typically, this would be files of some kind: Spread sheets, surveys, spec sheets, computer files, etc. The challenges here are:a. To find and access the right information. If we gather all the wrong information we cannot possibly make an informed decision. And, if there is information out there that could inform our process, but we don’t find and access it, we’ll limit the likelihood that our process produces great results.b. To assess it’s validity. Once we have the data, we need to make a decision as to how reliable it is. Its much like “Fake news.” Read the tactic of “Assigning validity” to review how to do this.
Sub-Set: Mine Information-OP Mining information from other people.
By this, we are referring to information that exists from other people. Typically, this would exist in conversations with other people, interviews, interrogations, and content prepared by other people: reports, slide sets, blog posts, podcasts, etc. So, for example, if we are making a decision about rearranging account territories, and we speak with each of the salespeople involved, what we learned would be information from other people.The challenges when we are mining information from other people is making sure that you are collecting the real information. Information from people is subject to being passed through lots of filters: Biases, faulty memories, poor analysis, personal agendas. So, what someone tells us, whether in a report, an interview, or any other means, should be viewed with somewhat of a jaundiced eye. So, much of this can be eliminated by asking ourselves some questions about the information:a. Does this person have anything to gain by an interpretation of this information?b. How do I know that this information is accurate?c. What’s missing from the information? What would I expect to be here and is not?One example of this comes from the days when I recruited salespeople for a fee-paid professional recruiting agency in the northern suburbs of Detroit. We would receive job orders from our clients seeking to hire a salesperson, and we would then recruit, interview and recommend people for the client to consider. So, interviewing salespeople seeking a job was an everyday occurrence, and a skill that we continually tried to improve upon. It’s a classic case of information from other people.We assumed that the salesperson had, at the minimum, embellished his background and references. So, we always checked the information that we could: The degree he/she claimed, the dates and reports of the previous employment, etc. A conversation with his/her reference was always a part of this “validity” exercise.Finally we could focus on what was missing in the resume and interview. (Question C above.) Is there a gap in the resume? Why is there no name for the previous supervisor?
Sub-Set: Mine Information-Y Information from Yourself.
This includes memories, judgements that we make — our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences, our values, and our opinions.The challenge here is to factor out bias and emotions and render the information as objectively as we can, understanding that it is probably never going to be completely objective. To do so, ask ourself these questions:a. How do know that to be true and accurate?b. Is there any other factor impacting that for which I am not accounting?So, for example, if we are contemplating a change of employment, we would ask yourself why the new job appealed to us and if we really saw ourself as being successful in the new job. This would cause us to be introspective and consider our values and experiences.
Used for
Sifting through information in order to unearth the important bits and pieces of it
Input/Output
The starting point is a beginning question – the end result of the Start Right competency.The output of this component process is a list of nuggets.
How to
Regardless of the sub-set, these are the steps in this process of Mining information:1. Collecting information — Determine which information is desirable and available.2. Methodically studying that information to uncover Nuggets.
1. Collecting information
If we are going to dig a successful mine, we must first determine where to dig. So, too, in mining information, our first question is “What information should I consider?”The starting point in the process of mining information is to begin with a question, and then develop a series of component questions which look at specific pieces of the beginning question. Let’s use our Start Right example – the small business person with the cash flow problem.First, look at the question that was the output of our Start Right process, and then develop some component questions, the answers to which will add to the answer to the beginning question. One way to do that is to ask the beginning question and then this question: “What information would we like to have in order to answer this question?”Remember, the beginning question is “How do I create a situation such that I can pay my bills on the 17th and meet my payroll on the 25th. and not have to continually worry about cash flow?”As we think about it, before we jump to a conclusion, we methodically list possibilties for potential solutions. Here’s an application for the Sledge Hammer tactic. We break the question up into component pieces, and realize that our eventual solutlion will come from some combination of our customers, our vendors, our employees, our contractors and lenders. So, we formulate the ‘component questions.’What potential is there within our customers?What potential solutions are there within our vendors?What potential solutions are there with our employees?What potential solutions are there with outside contractors and lenders?Now that we have these questions, we can create a list of the information we’d like to have. As we write this down, we come up with this:What potential is there within our customers?Information I’d like to have in order to answer the question: a. An idea of how much potential there is within our current customers that we might be able to realize. b. The same information for our market in general — the prospects and customers we might reasonably reach. c. What prevents us from more fully penetrating our current customers?We proceed that way with each of the questions, until we have a list. This is the ideal information set that we’d love to have. However, we very rarely get everything we want, and we need to adjust to what is available. We bring the real world into our process, and identify the information that we can actually obtain and that comes the closest to our ideal.Focusing on the first component question, as an example, we come up with this:Information that we can access: • A spreadsheet of our customers, and how much they spent with us during the year. • The results of a focus group we did to find areas of additional potential within our customers. • A spreadsheet of how much we spent with each vendor. • Our notes from a conversation with two lenders about a future line-of-credit. • We decide we’d also like to have several conversations with our key employees about the possibility of investing in the company. See josh p. 59When we have identified and gained access to all the information noted above, we have completed the “gathering information” part of the process, and are now ready to move onto ‘gleaning nuggets.”
2. Mining information to glean nuggets
The second part of this process is digging nuggets of useful information out of the data we can access.On a trip to South Africa, as we flew over the city of Johannesburg, we noticed huge piles of dirt spread around the city. The pilot explained that these were mine dumps. In the gold mining for which the area was famous, large amounts of dirt were removed from the ground, sifted for gold nuggets and dumped on the ground in big heaps. Some were 30 – 40 feet high and extended for blocks.That’s the process to keep in mind as we sift through the information to find the nuggets buried within. A nugget is a fact, an observation or a conclusion about the information that may be useful in answering the question. We are going to dig through lots of information to find the few nuggets within it.So, we consider each piece of information and try to pry out any information that may be useful. For example.1. When we looked at the spreadsheet of our customers, we notice that some customers, even though they are the same size as others, purchase a great deal more from us. If they could purchase more, couldn’t other customers of the same size also have the capacity to purchase more? That leads us to project that there is more potential for purchases in most of our customers than we are currently enjoying. That statement become a nugget.2. As we pour through the notes of the focus group, it becomes apparent that many of our customers would prefer to reduce the number of vendors be consolidating their purchases into more items from fewer vendors. That become nugget #2.3. As we reflect on our conversations with a couple outside lenders, we note that it is possible to secure a lne of credit, using our receivables as collateral. nugget #3.
A tip….
When you are looking for nuggets, look for what is missing and not said as much as what is said. So for example, a spread sheet that indicates that 47% of your customers prefer X to Y is a good piece of information. Think a little deeper, and you will realize that 53% don’t prefer either.That’s the process — mining and exposing nuggets until you have exhausted the information and assembled a group of nuggets.So, in this competency, we start with a beginning question (which is the end result of the Start Right competency) and end with a list of nuggets.
