Too Much of a Good Thing? Swimming v. Drowning in a Sea of Information

As I approach the ripe old age of 50, I'm thinking more and more about the trade offs involved in what I do. How do I manage my limited resources - most especially time and money? I'm getting more and more picky on what I spend my time on - I consider each engagement as trading off a piece of my life (measured in hours, days, weeks, etc.) in exchange for some form of monetary compensation. There is a qualitative and quantitative assessment involved in evaluating each new project. I think this is the essence of the time / money trade-off that Grace talks about above. It is inherent in every build v. buy / outsourcing decision that an organization faces as well.

There's also that aspect of value, where we ascribe value to a resource based on how much we paid for it. In a world of abundant, "free" information, we think in terms of commodities and getting things at least cost. And in today's Internet world, we all tend to suffer the illusion that information has been somehow devalued because substitutes are readily available at no or low cost. In fact, the marketplace just grows richer and more complex with more free information.

But we tend to overlook the time involved in processing information, separating wheat from chaffe. Consultants, more experienced and better connected, provide the value-added service of sorting through the mountains of 'free" information to find the kernels of truth that will make an impact on their lives or businesses, the real value that the client seeks.

In a hyper-competitive, time-crunched world, where each decision can have ever-greater impact, the ability to evaluate all the decision variables is compounded not only by the lack of time, but also by a surfeit of information. The organization that tries to do it all themselves risks becoming penny-wise and pound-foolish. A consultant offers a way to mitigate that risk and ensure better decison-making.

I believe we're in the middle of a transition in how we do business, at all levels. How we leverage our resources - including how we manage and use information to our advantage - makes the difference in a success and an also-ran. And as with any other business, those consultants who offer high-touch, high-value service will stand out from the pack. We live in an age of plenty, information and otherwise, and there exists a continuum of choices regarding information acquisition and management.

Differentiation is key. Service providers who are successful at packaging information into valuable, unique knowledge services, custom-tailored for their clients, will stand out from the crowd and are at little risk of being commoditized by ever more free information (IMHO, its about the 3 Rs: relationships, reputation, and referrals).

But the availability of so much information is increasing the number of substitutes for such high-touch consulting, and each new low-barrier-to-entry business with a better information mouse trap creates ever more downward price pressure on the consulting marketplace. And any service provider who offers no real differentiation from a few hours spent on Wikipedia and Google is already a commodity, they just don't know it yet.