06/29/2017
By Stephen Hall
Tennis is one of the most underappreciated sports. When you ask someone what sports they follow—they inevitably answer with one of the big three: football, baseball or basketball. I don’t know if it is because tennis is not a BIG MONEY sport—or that it is played by an individual and not a team. On the other hand, maybe it’s just a matter of branding.
Any who, something you may not know about me is that I have a lifelong love of tennis. I’ve been nationally seeded and I play every weekend. What I find so fascinating about the game is the amount of strategy it requires. Tennis is truly a game played between your ears and on the court. I thought it would be interesting to apply some of the strategies I use in tennis to information management. So, here goes:
Tennis is a game of repeatable patterns such as serving, returning, rallying and approaching. Have a plan using these patterns in order to play smarter. It goes without saying that any information management initiative that is approached without a plan will probably fail. I know you would never do this—but I’ll make a suggestion: when you are developing your strategy look for patterns of use for your document workflows. When you break them down — business, processes are not all that different. For example, client management isn’t that different from vendor accounts payable. In both situations you have “case documents” (the vendor or client’s) that require approvals to transform as a result of the process. Also—look for patterns in different departments. When you have your “one of these things is like the other” hat on—you’d be surprised what you’ll find.
Between the points—the most important match is in your head—so learn from the best. If you haven’t read Andre Agassi’s book “Open”—I highly recommend it. Agassi literally lives the match in his head before he plays it on the court. In order to be able to do this—he’s used his keen observational skills to “know” his opponent. Before you map out your information strategy, ask other organizations how they handle. Ask prospective vendors for proof-of-concepts that they have built using their other clients as a model. Consider engaging an analyst with expertise in your market. There is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel.
On the court, you have to keep moving. No one will hit the ball to you. OK—this one is an information management tip, a tennis principle and a life lesson. Triple score! But seriously, just like business needs to be nimble to react to changing market conditions—so does your information management. Processes are conceived to support business—when the business changes—the process needs to change too! I see a lot of this in forms development. I’ll ask someone why they need a particular piece of information. They will say, “Oh—well we used to need that for X—but we don’t do it that way anymore.” I’ll then suggest we take the item off of the form. Why ask for information—you don’t need?
If you’d like to discuss these ideas further—or want to set up a game—you can reach me at [email protected].
