The Information Reservoir: Bimodal information organization and Enterprise Search.

Staying afloat under the deluge of information that is presented to us every day can be a challenge,

before we even think of swimming in it. Work overload challenges both productivity and performance.

Increased business communication, globalization and de-regulation, increased competition,

downsizing, fewer secretaries and technical assistants, more outsourcing (so more companies to

communicate with) and more ways/channels to communicate are potential causal mechanisms.

The wider availability (democratization) of information through channels such as the Internet and

social media are trends that are also likely to give rise to causes for information overload.

Work simplification is one response to employees overwhelmed by increasing organizational

complexity, information overload, and a 24/7 work environment. Specific causes may include too

many unnecessary meetings and emails, pervasive always-on technology and complexity of work

practices. A new capital may be emerging in our fast-forward work environments, one of ‘time capital’.

Deciding where to invest this capital and how to balance the needs of the immediate short term, with

the needs of the long term is a key challenge for organizations.

Simplification and decluttering

Some organizations have undertaken simplification or decluttering exercises to reduce workload,

through elimination of unnecessary meetings and emails, complexity and number of tasks. These

include such measures as stopping emails at weekends, switching off voicemail and re-issuing email

rules. The sentiment is a switch from ‘do more with less’ to ‘do fewer things better’.

The pace of technology diffusion is increasing exponentially accelerating consumerization and change,

users demand simpler technology with less complexity, yet simplification in the ‘front end’ often

means more complexity in the ‘back end’. In design terms, simplicity can be seen as subtracting the

obvious and adding the meaningful. Two methods to achieve simplicity are to organize and to learn.

We know some tools make things simpler but we may have to invest some of our ‘time capital’ initially,

a form of delayed gratification if you like.

To reduce workplace complexity, some scholars argue for the removal of “the formal bureaucratic

overhead” replacing it with autonomy, support and empowerment.

So how might this apply to organizations?

Complex systems

Management models in some organizations are moving from linear and mechanistic to complex and

organic/adaptive. From one where the focus is only controlling employees, to one where the focus is

on encouraging their creativity. It was not that long ago a CEO described their organization as a clock.

The point they were making on one hand was a good one, the mechanism needs all the parts to

function, all are critically important. However, on the other hand people were likened to cogs and the

organization as a mechanism. Clocks are complicated things, but complicated things are predictable.

Organizations are not like that, they are complex, unpredictable, capable of self-organization and

producing new emergent structures and behaviours.

Complexity is used to refer to complexity of an entity, defined by the amount of information needed

to describe it, non-linearity and emergence – giving rise to something unexpected. Managing complex

systems is accepting things are messy and you don’t have all the answers, the aim is to be less wrong

over time, organizations, which are social systems, are likely to be complex systems.

Whilst we may not be able to predict what will happen in a complex system, there are often some

rules/principles that give rise to the complexity. A swarm of starlings, a Mandelbrot set or even a flow

of traffic in a major city can give rise to very complex patterns, but those can arise from some pretty

simple rules. Some organizational practitioners advocate a trajectory of supporting autonomy and

self-organization, diversity of thought with systems thinking and agility for adaptation. In other words,

to move away from command and control, reductionist thinking and rigid practices.

So how might this apply to information management in organizations?

Paradoxes

Paradoxes are common, rather than managing to resolve paradoxes, being able to ‘live with both’ is

what may be more useful to consider. As one author described it, the tyranny of the OR and the genius

of the AND.

This is what the Bimodal IT concept is attempting to convey, long, large stable core IT delivery AND

agile fast delivery.

People are organization animals, it is in our nature to group and categorize almost everything we see.

Applying this to information management, there may be a case to allow project teams to self-organize

their information. Guidance and support can be provided but not necessarily dictated. The formality

structures only come into play to look after the long term information asset. So how does this relate

to folders and tags as a way of organizing and retrieving information?

Folders and tags

Filing in folders and tagging items can both be deemed as methods to label information. Filing and

navigating folder hierarchies have been part of Cyberculture for the past forty years. Some scholars

argue that folders and hierarchical navigation have outlasted their usefulness, “an increasingly

irrelevant historical relic and its burial is overdue”. Two arguments are typically presented that

illustrate the drawbacks of folders and hierarchical navigation. Firstly the limitation that with a

hierarchical folder structure you are imposing a single classification onto information, when a single

dimension can never represent all scenarios which can cause ambiguities for the user. Secondly, users

cannot easily find or remember where information is and it may be hidden from view in nested folder

structures. Tagging as often proposed as the solution, but that too has limitations.

One could argue that the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) deployments in recent

years have done similar things. The deficiencies of the folders on the file-share have been used as a

justification for an EDMS tagging approach without much evidence that is a complete viable

replacement. When tagging approaches using pick lists have not worked, some practitioners may have

blamed human behaviour or the change management process. There is enduring evidence in the

literature that the experience of EDMS deployments on the whole, has been considered poor by many

practitioners and business professionals, not living up to expectations.

Many scholars note the lack of maturity of EDMS (ECM) research as well as its benefits for

simplification of work processes. However there is also plenty of evidence that EDMS have not

reduced simplicity at all, but added to the feeling of complexity by employees. Instead of focusing on

what EDMS technology to use and the various flow of more functionality which many articles still do,

perhaps the focus should be on what principles of information organization are used?

One recent research study investigated preferences for using folders compared to tags to organize

and to retrieve information. They found strong preferences for using folders for both organization and

retrieval and even where tags were used, the majority only used a single tag, a finding also made by

other studies. Long term habits were suggested as one possible factor, although one of the

experiments included a group that used only tagging techniques for two weeks, before given a choice.

They found that people found tagging cognitively challenging, with filing in folders deemed simpler.

Supported by other studies they suggest that hierarchical folders help encourage a mental model of

the information and people may be hardwired to navigate from the general to the specific. When

searching for content others had uploaded to the web, it was argued users could not possibly know

where it is located so tags may be a better option in that situation.

It is perhaps unsurprising that recent surveys indicate EDMS deployments have stalled and over half

of companies still rely on information file-shares. So what are the implications for searching the

enterprise?

More intelligent information management systems and visualization, pre-attributing folders, using

automated classification, information services, providing more time and improving information

literacy are some of the approaches that could be used, a single one is unlikely to deliver optimal

results.

Enterprise search

This findings are particularly problematical, as there appear to be tendencies for EDMS to be deployed

in organizations with approaches that are fundamentally based on tagging. Conversely, evidence from

enterprise search deployments indicate lack of tags is a causal factor for poor search task

performance. Tagging is considered challenging. Some practitioners have even questioned whether as

well as being the solution, information professionals are also part of the problem. For example design

and enforcement of over-zealous metadata capture forms.

So what other models may exist if people are not going to tag all their information?

Information Reservoir

The term ‘data lake’ has been used to describe a resource of all an organization’s data containing all

attributes for people to use without being highly structured/hierarchically stored, although all

intended use may be unknown or unpredictable at this time. Enterprise search indexes (containing

text and numbers) may also fall into this definition.

A metaphor with more explanatory power may be ‘Information Reservoir’. This expands on the

definition of a ‘data lake’ and emphasizes the anthropocentric purpose of (and structures needed for)

the resource. To treat, monitor, manage and exploit it.

Given the choice, if individuals and teams can choose how to organize their own information, to ‘self-

organize’, the evidence points towards the inclusion of the use of folders in some form. Instead of

seeing this as problematic, one model is to let this happen, don’t micromanage or play the records

compliance card to force people to work in a certain way in this creative and at times chaotic working

environment. These are metaphorically the ‘creative ponds’ from which new ways of doing things may

emerge. You only have so much ‘time capital’, so trying to get everyone to be a librarian may not lead

to desired outcomes.

In this model the formal bureaucracy is only brought in to manage the final/key deliverables that

belong in the long term asset, in the enterprise information reservoir. It is at this point that tagging

may need to occur in earnest (using many approaches discussed earlier). This coordination

bureaucracy may be vital, as many cognitive biases such as instant gratification, self-interest and

principle of least effort may lead this (long term) step to be deprioritized for short term gains.

This investment of ‘time capital’ by business leadership may be a form of delayed gratification, where

the gratification receiver is likely to be a future individual (as yet unknown) other than the producer

of the information. Left to self-organize without any coordination, control or bureaucracy, is likely to

lead to self-organization around short term attractors.

Exploiting the knowledge and competencies within the organization may be the only sustainable

competitive advantage for an organization. These competencies and explicit information may exist in

many parts of the organization, so need to be freely available not trapped in isolated ponds.

The picture below (Figure 1) shows such as model as a metaphor with self-organization and

bureaucracy controlling the population, monitoring and treatment of the enterprise information

reservoir.

Figure 1 – The Information Reservoir (Quality may involve delaying gratification of time capital)

The model in Figure 1 is more complex than a model of using either folders or either tags, as it contains

both. However, just as the water plumbing in your house shows, back end complexity can deliver front

end simplicity. But we may not immediately believe that, our cognitive biases such as ‘simplicity bias’

might steer us towards the simpler description, even if it delivers worse outcomes.

The same concepts may be applied to search. Having a “Google-like” search box and ten blue links

with good ranked results helped by tags is important. However, there is evidence that a single user

interface can never meet all our needs for finding information, especially exploiting the information

reservoir as a whole (some greater than the parts) to discover new connections and knowledge via

analytics.

Summary – Bimodal approach

In terms of managing and organizing information it may not be a one size fits all approach. For all their

deficiencies, there are many aspects of folder hierarchies that appear to be useful today. It is also

generally accepted tagging helps searching in an ever increasing information reservoir volume,

especially when you are looking for ‘other people’s stuff’.

Living with this paradox, a bimodal (or multimodal) approach may deliver better outcomes than

choosing one OR the other. This bimodal mind-set may also apply to enterprise search & discovery,

where bimodal approaches of search as a ‘utility’ versus ‘search driven applications’ may combine for

a best of both worlds approach.

Keeping things simple, may not necessarily mean doing things one way.

Paul Cleverley

Robert Gordon University

www.paulhcleverley.com

References

Agarwal, D., Rea, B., van Berkel, A. (2015). Simplification of work: The coming revolution. Deloitte.

Online Article (http://dupress.com/articles/work-simplification-human-capital-trends-2015/,

accessed May 2016).

Bawden, D., Robinson, L. (2008). The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other paradoxes

and pathologies. Journal of Information Science, 35(2), 180-191

Bergman, O., Gradovitch, N., Bar-Ilan, Beyth-Marom, R. (2013). Folder versus Tag Preference in

Personal Information Management. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and

Technology, 64(10), 1995-2012

Bersin, J. (2015). Becoming irresistible: A new model for employee engagement. Deloitte Review

Issue 16. Online Article (http://dupress.com/articles/employee-engagement-strategies/, accessed

May 2016).

Carr, N. (2008). Is Google Making us Stupid? Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of

Education, 107(2), 89-94

Cleverley, P.H., Burnett, S. (2015). The best of both worlds: Highlighting the synergies of combining

knowledge modelling and automated techniques to improve information search and discovery in oil

and gas exploration. ISKO Conference, London July 134th 2015. Online Article

(http://www.iskouk.org/content/best-both-worlds-highlighting-synergies-combining-knowledge-

modelling-and-automated, accessed May 2016).

Collins, J., Porras, J. (1994). Built to Last: Successful habits of visionary companies. USA. HarperCollins

Publishers Inc.

Dixon, J. (2010). Data Lake Definition. Online Article

(https://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/pentaho-hadoop-and-data-lakes/, accessed May

2016).

Lissack, M.R. (2002). The Interaction of Complexity and Management. USA. Quorum Books.

Maeda, J. (2006). The Laws of Simplicity. USA. MIT Press.

McGrath, R. (2013). The Pace of Technology Adoption is Speeding Up. Harvard Business Review.

Online Article (https://hbr.org/2013/11/the-pace-of-technology-adoption-is-speeding-up/, accessed

May 2016).

Panke, S., Gaiser, B. (2009). With My Head Up in the Clouds: Using Social Tagging to Organize

Knowledge. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 23(3), 318-349

Salamntu, L.T.P, Seymour, L. (2015). A review of enterprise content management (ECM): Growth and

Maturation of ECM from the year 2011 to 2011. Digital Information Processing and Communications

(ICDIPC) Fifth International Conference, 7th – 9th October 2015, Sierre Switzerland. 31-37

Satell, G. (2013). Why We Shouldn’t Be Surprised That Managers Don’t Embrace Complexity. Forbes.

Online Article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/05/18/why-we-shouldnt-be-surprised-

that-managers-dont-embrace-complexity/#6fc20d105dbd, accessed May 2016).

Seltzer, M., Murphy, N. (2009). Hierarchical file systems are dead. HotOS ’09 Proceedings of the 12th

conference on Hot topics in operating systems. Monte Verità, Switzerland, 1-5.

Stanford, D.D. (2014). “Coca-Cola disconnects voice mail at headquarters,” Bloomberg. Online Article

(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-22/coca-cola-disconnects-voice-mail-at-

headquarters, accessed May 2016).

Waddington, P. (1997). Dying for Information. A report on the effects of information overload in the

UK and Worldwide. Beyond the Beginning: The Global Digital Library. An International conference

organized by UKOLN on Behalf of JISC, CHI, BLRIC, CAUSE and CAUL 16-17th June 1997 at the Queen

Elizabeth Conference Centre, London, UK.