InformationBlackHole

These are the folks who hoard information and actually seek to destroy information radiators whenever they appear - often under feeble claims of "security" or "it's not good for morale if people know too much about what's going on."

I don't understand them, but I have to deal with them all the time. Maybe someone can help me out. - JerryWeinberg 2003.04.10

I once worked with a man named Kelly. He went into fits of anger when I would type information into a word processor and print it on paper. I noticed he had a similar reaction when others would do the same. He hated to see information on paper.

I don't know if there is any connection, but my wife once told me of the same reaction she saw from people who had never learned to read. She once worked in a state government facility operating a cafeteria. In that job she met many people who had never learned to read. She recognized these people by their reaction to paper with words on it.

I am not sure about this, so I'll pose it as a question. Is there a connection between avoidance of information and inability to absord and use it?

DwaynePhillips 11 April 2003

Could it be something like the idea that a camera exposure captures your soul? Maybe some of us think that capturing an idea, especially a true idea, on paper makes us hollow, exposed, or even naked.

I remember one job where we met weekly to consider whether the criteria to move to the testing phase would be met by the planned date. We were into simplicity, so our judgement was to phrased as green, yellow, or red. The decision was always green and we always slipped the date before our judgements were proven wrong.

One meeting my manager was out and I had to make the call for our team. Being simple-minded I went through the criteria, looked at the date, and said no way. So I said red.

My manager (one the better ones I've had) straightened me out after he was singed. Apparently, people in middle-management strongly believed (rightly or wrongly, I don't know) that senior management would severely punish such awareness but would accept the slips when no other choice was possible.

MikeMelendez 2003.04.11

I met someone who said a manager he knows gives out information "on a need-to-know basis" only... where "need-to-know" was apparently defined too strictly... don't know why.

I also met someone who I think is the one who removes the occasional fliers I put up on each floor's public notice board - fliers about an architecture discussion group forming, fliers about seminars on agile methods, etc., ... next to the fliers other people put up about financial $eminars, used items for sale, and charity events.

The reason I think it was him was his objection in a recent management class when I suggested assigning tasks to a team, where the members can sign up for the tasks as they became available (a work-queue, in other words).

His objection was that the members of the team would have to talk (!) to each other. His counter-proposal would have the manager be the only one to talks the members of the team. (Analogy to star-network topology.)

Still don't understand why he thinks that way.

KeithRay 2003.04.11

This sounds like zero-sum game believers - "there's only so much information, so if you gain, I must be losing."

If these folks can't imagine that information is not diminished by sharing ("How many copies can you make before the info wears out?") they should be exposed to Fisher & Ury's Getting to YES for insight into Win-Win.

BobLee 2003.04.11

I once had a manager who would not let anything bad be reported about any of his projects. If anyone was too vocal about the poor state of their project, he would talk to them about the importance of maintaining good relations with other departments and the importance of putting a good appearance to upper management, what with all the downsizings going on. The people he valued the most were the ones who would accept the status quo, go along with his plans, and work hard to accomplish something - "team players".

One day when we came in to work, his boss was here and he was gone. He had been let go for "violating the ethics code". It seems he had been rewarding himself financially, probably because all his projects were doing so well.

Sometimes these people do have something to hide.

SN 2003.04.11

I'm sure glad I started this page - I'm getting lots of ideas about what's going on. The idea of appearance suggests an hypothesis - are blackholers always super neat dressers, or super fashionable? "If you look like a good manager, you must be a good manager?" or "If it looks like the bulletin board doesn't have any 'management-responsibility' stuff on it, then the manager must be taking care of all the 'management-responsibility' stuff." - JerryWeinberg 2003.04.11

The particular manager I wrote about, the "unethical" manager (I hope that isn't considered a redundant phrase), was not a snappy dresser. He was more about attaining and maintaining a life of comfort and ease. He really enjoyed his meals at nice restaurants.

The most distinctive thing about him was the effort he put into building good relationships. He wanted to be known as a "great guy". He was always trying to do things for others or give them gifts or favors. Trying to create goodwill or an obligation on the part of others toward himself. Being known a nice guy acts as a buffer against closer scrutiny.

The other part was the effort he put into maintaining an innocuous appearance. "Nothing to see here, move along." He didn't make waves, agreed with whoever he was talking to, downplayed or made excuses for any project glitches that escaped his little domain (usually pointing to the failures of others), put effort into making sure these problems didn't get any bigger and draw more unfavorable attention, and tried to focus any attention he was getting on any successes he could claim.

If he had been "super fashionable" or ostentatious, it probably would have drawn too much attention to himself.

SN 2003.04.12

Just saw another "reason" to not communicate in a blog -- some people want to "batch up" their communication... quoting http://joeelylean.blogspot.com :

"We wanted to send the updated info to everyone at the same time." Huh?

The supplier wanted to batch the information distribution. Had it been a piece of common information, such as pricing updates, in which it was crucial that all customers got the same information at the same time, it would make sense. However, this was purely a technical update, specific to our situation. It made no difference to me when or if anyone else got the info. But we needed our data!!! I would have waited another week had I not asked, when, in fact, it was ready, right now, for me. And, it was distributed with a simple email, "Parameter XXX should be set for YYY."

The reason? Nothing malicious. The supplier, without thinking deeply about customer value, felt it would be more "efficient" to batch specific information to all parties at once. This simply reflects our innate, perhaps genetic, tendency to batch.

I wouldn't agree that batching a innate or genetic... It's been learned, and it can be unlearned.

KeithRay 2003.04.12

That supplier had a point. It is more efficient. No one was can afford to spend their whole day emailing information as it becomes available. Simularly, no one can afford to be up-to-date on their email all the time. So "batching" must take place, even if it's just to post the info to the information radiator. How frequently you batch depends on the timeliness of the information. That timeliness must be known to be acted on. To me the key phrase is "without thinking deeply about customer value". That's quite a mind read. I suggest simply that the supplier probably didn't know the timeliness. I would guess they were easily persuaded and altered their batching frequency accordingly. If not, I suggest that something else was the problem and not the batching.

To relate it to this thread, perhaps we also unintentionally create information black holes when we think we already know the answers. I believe I've fallen into a number of those of my own making. This is sufficiently different from Jerry's premise, that perhaps it should be a new thread: InformationPulsars maybe?

MikeMelendez 2003.04.13

I subscribe to several Yahoo groups, and always elect to get mail digests (Yahoo's batching mechanism) to avoid being flooded with individual emails. Since batching is independent of message content, late-breaking "the meeting has been cancelled" messages often arive a half day late. That's one downside of a mechanism that's content neutral. --DaveSmith 2003.04.13

Coordination vs. content. Stuff in process, or the overhead of managing the process. The handshake or the data packet. We've known about this distinction in systems for decades. Even model it, with IDEFX (if memory serves) where control inputs look different from "data" stuff. Why? Because they behave differently.

Meeting schedule changes are handshaking, so behave differently from design content or thoughtful comments. The latter can batch, because the purpose is understanding. The former can't because it's just about signals.

Deciding everything is a control signal, something you have to deal with right now, is a kind of InformationBlackHole. I've worked with some people who were under the impression that the world was a call center. You end up with brownian motion. -- JimBullock, 2003.04.13

Interesting discussion.

I once worked with a man who claimed to believe in the "need to know" principle -- i.e., only tell people what they need to know. He then defined that need Very Narrowly... if someone needed a piece of information to actually proceed with their job, then they needed to know it ... otherwise, they didn't. He Claimed that he didn't want to give people too much information -- that would just lead to confusion and distraction. But, to me, it Felt like he was trying to maintain control over who had access to what information....

Of course, I 'reacted' by trying to share as much information as I could, whenever I could, by whatever means... but that was in my younger days. (Now, I'd be more 'sophisticated' about my 'response' -- but it still might be similar!)

DianeGibson 4/6/04

Diane -

I actually met a project manager who handed out the project plan on a "need to know" basis. So the test lead only recieved the test related pieces and the developers didn't see any of it except their individual assignments.

Needless to say, this team had some difficulties with coordination, communication, and morale.

ED 040804

I'm at a client right now with what feels like a related problem. Not an "information black hole" but more like "information plasma." Lots and lots of information. It's energetic, and absorbs or erodes any more organized information it contacts. It bounces around, warps and flows, so it isn't really any one "where." And between all the particles, every possible state, every possible fact exists somewhere.

The net effect is the same, but louder, I think.

- JimBullock, 2004.04.08

Interesting. It seems we've described two seemingly opposed ways in which access to organizational information is 'not there'. The one I described was Supposedly, at least, designed to deal with something like what you describe, at the other end. Both have different emotional impacts (frustration and anger at the person who is blocking/denying access to information vs overwhelm (and anger or self-blame?) with the massive mess.... both mean that the individual can't really see the big picture.

Is 'organization' a countervaling force... and what else?

DianeGibson 4/9/04

I don't know exactly. These organizational information situations we've described are examples of some kind of important something to do with the balance between structure and adaptability. That's all I have right now. Maybe we have an information theory or complex systems lurker who will speak up and help us out.

The other slice is that this is, of course, a human problem. The payoff in either case is control of what can happen, which usually goes with fear, making it in others or dealing with it personally. So the emotions of the people involved are one place to intervene. Make it OK to act without information, or OK to hand out information and other people might actually do something, and so on.

The human, emotional part is necessary, but not sufficient I think for dealing with either information black holes, or information plasma. In the end, even should everyone involved be perfectly adjusted, lots and lots of activities - say making computer systems - involves more information than most of us can hold in our heads. Certain genius people who never sponge out don't count. They're a special case (and you know who you are - it's just another datum.) So managing information some way becomes another part of the solution at least for us humans.

The big trick in the event, I think, is to remember that someone is getting a payoff from the black-hole or the plasma. And whatever is being done to support the black hole or the plasma isn't really personal. It's the best solution someone has to meeting their own needs. Whether you (or I) want to put up with that behavior is a separate question.

-- JimBullock 2004.04.10 (Source of high-quality chaos, for four decades.)

I probably count as the opposite of an InformationBlackHole (would that be an Information White Hole, I guess? Not too sure about the travelling back in time associated with White Holes though!).

I've tended to share information with people (even partial information) on the grounds that the Rumor Mill (or Rumour Mill for us Europeans) usually runs faster than anything else and it's better to give partial clarity than none at all. The situations I tend to remember when I've done this are the UsualSuspects of The Reorganisation and The Layoff.

Perhaps two of the motivating factors for a person who is an InformationBlackHole are that InformationIsPower (probably a negative reason for keeping it to yourself) and that some people may feel weak if they're not able to give a partial answer (a positive motivation, but perhaps still not a positive outcome?), or give complete clarity when there is less than complete clarity to give?

PhilStubbington 2004.04.17

Here's a systems approach to the problem: Imagine this is a self-organizing system of automata (as in the game of Life). What simple rules for each automaton (person) would best insure that we don't get information blackout or information whiteout, and that each gets the information it needs?

Then, what would be needed to inculcate these rules, and maintain them, in the organization? - JerryWeinberg 2004.04.18

That's interesting. Way interesting. -- JimBullock, 2004.04.20

Updated: Tuesday, April 20, 2004