It’s impossible to make quality decisions without the right information. Sometimes the information is available in the organization but not shared with the right people. Or it may not exist because the organization has not bothered to gather all the information that they need to accurately analyze the business and external environment and then make informed decisions.

In the Forbes article Dam, Flow Or Flood: How Does Information Travel In Your Organization? it discusses the direct correlation between the quality of information flow and the quality of results. Here are the key points from that article:

• Dams – some companies have places where information abruptly stops
• Floods – organizations have a flood of information via emails and other sources
• Many people spend 20% of their time searching for information
• While information is power, relevant information is real power. The rest is noise.

Who doesn’t complain about too much email? Some people feel that if they send you an email with a lot of information, you will of course read it, regardless of how much email you receive on a daily basis. Many people put aside an email that is very long and instead respond to shorter emails first. Emails are an entire topic area, but needless to say, they tend to fall into the “floods” category.

What we want is short, relevant information when we need it. So how do we move to do that?

Companies need a system that they all use to manage information flow. That can be Teams, Slack, Asana, or one of many other reliable sources.

Another Forbes article, Five Simple Steps To Improve Internal Communication For In-House And Remote Teams outlines simple steps that organizations can implement immediately. Those include:

1. Give your communication a home. Use a unified project management system.
2. Lead by example. Open communication and transparency starts at the top.
3. Develop educational content. Read the Surmani Business Coaching article, Are Your Team Plays Documented? on how you can document your central team processes.
4. Install a true open-door policy – it also helps management spot highly engaged and motivated employees who may be suitable for future positions.
5. Create systems for collecting feedback – Give employees the opportunity to share their thoughts at every level of your company.

Eliminate the silos that exist in your organization and get everyone working together for the overall good of the company. And, be sure to store your data in a safe place, where it is backed up regularly. 

A Sherweb article on 8 Reasons on How Data Loss Can Negatively Impact Your Business reports that less than 10% of firms backup their data every day. 93% of companies that lost their data center for ten days or more due to a disaster, filed for bankruptcy within one year of that disaster. The average failure rate of backing up all data is 75%. Develop a system for information flow. Get everyone to use it and be sure to back it up regularly.

Developing effective systems for a consistent flow of information will help set your company on a path to efficiency, consistency, high customer satisfaction and high employee satisfaction. It’s all about the quality, quantity and consistency of the information flow. That’s where the real power lies.