In a meeting today, I was told a really interesting aside by one Steve Allen. He had apparently been charged with setting up an information system for some analysts in a bank. They wanted news and they wanted it to be relevant.
Same old same old.
He set the system up for them and every bit of news that was coming through was in their ball park. Now the analysts were working in fairly niche sectors, so there just wasn’t that much new information out there that was relevant to them. What was coming through the pipes was quality stuff, but it was dripping not pouring. Fair enough really.
Except they weren’t happy. And they all had the same complaint.
“Where is it all?!”
It turns out that they wanted to see information pouring across their screens. Obviously the relevant stuff had to be easy to spot – but as important as quality was quantity and the feeling of being in a fast-paced environment. If the analysts didn’t get that overloaded, time-pressed, picking out the gems feeling, they didn’t work half as well.
Strange eh?