Order From Disorder

Entropy as commonly understood is a measure of disorder.  As the phase changes the entropy reduces. For example, ice has less entropy compared to water. The newer definition of Entropy is now changing from a measure of disorder to “Energy Dispersal”. This definition is very apt in the current Information Age. As we drive in the “Information highway”,we occasionally tend to get lost in its many byelanes. Our focus, ideas, goals tend to get dispersed in this journey. As individuals or individuals in corporates we generate brilliant ideas but many times it dies along the way. Let me explain it a bit more. Have you ever felt that you have a great idea and you “tweet” or share with your friends on “facebook” or you send an email to a colleague in office? In the vast clutter of web information, your idea gets sucked in bits and bytes and gets lost in the labyrinth of servers and storage….never to be heard of again. Ofcourse, not all the ideas generated may be brilliant but imagine if these ideas goes through an ideation process, gets nourished and delivered in its magnificent form? The individual gets his or her credit and humanity is much better for it.

 

 

Is Order from  Disorder possible? Is there a way  to channelize ideas to execution? Is there a way to churn these vast clutter of data in to meaningful information? This is precisely what some new age aspirants are attempting. Deriving Simplicity from Complexity is their goal. A company called Aikonlabs(www.aikonlabs.com) in India has developed an Idea Management application that channelizes the idea generated in the social media fabric and within the corporate network, pushes it through process gates, gets the idea validated through different stakeholders and gets the idea navigated through an execution cycle and collaborative space and voila! … you get a working model of the idea. The company is trying to prove that ideas can be weaved through the boundaries of Social Media, Academia and the high corporate walls without compromising intellectual property rights. At the same time they are also preventing ideas getting lost in the oblivion of bits and bytes.

 

Another interesting technology that is attempting to make meaning out of the disorder is enCapsa. When we sit within the four walls of a corporate, our only source of information is what comes from the corporate database. A database that is structured – of rows and columns. But in a large enterprise there can be numerous applications that stores the same data in their proprietary structure in different ways. For example “Customer Name” in one database could be “Account Name” in another database. It could be just “Name” in the email database. What about unstructured data flowing in from other sources aka social media? They do not even come under purview of the organizations today to know the business trend. As a matter of fact, many products are vilified or glorified in the lanes of twitter and facebook. If these information does not form the business intelligence input of the corporate analysis…ahem…they may not be even in tune with what the Gen ‘Y’ wants! In a nutshell, organization of today needs to integrate both structured and unstructured data to do a true analysis to arrive at Sales and Products strategies or to that matter even product design.  That’s what companies like enCapsa are trying to do – integrate the “boundary less” world to the four walls of the corporate.

Creating Order from Disorder is what these new trailblazers are up to…..

Distinction Bias

Imagine this. You are the CIO of a large bank and evaluating two leading CRM applications to implement in your bank. You have compared feature by feature of both the CRM applications and finally choose one as you believe it is more superior in quality, user interface etc. However, after implementing the CRM you are not so sure. You are not truly thrilled with your choice. Your satisfaction level is not what it is supposed to be. This happens with many of us, often. For example, when we compare the features of the car in the showroom with a similar model or the TV in the mall we see the superior features but when we use it standalone we are not able to see the features standout. Why does this happen?

Your decision to buy was influenced by comparing the dis-similar features with the other model. You may have taken a very different decision if you had seen each model separately! This is because evaluating the two models together brings out dissimilar features than when you are evaluating them separately.Behavioral scientists call this Distinction bias.

We make these kinds of decision all the time and often regret our decisions. For example, you may decide to change your job because it is not challenging enough. You get two job offers - one of N15 million and other of N18 million. You do a feature comparison and find that the N18 million is boring but better paying. The N15 million job will give you the challenge you were looking for.  Guess what?. You end up in the N18 million job! Few months down the line you regret your decision.

If you had just the N15 million job offer would you have taken it? Would you have been happy?

Imagine a different situation. You go to buy a shirt and see different shades. You finally pick two. You try each of them turn by turn – independently – and view yourself in front of the mirror in the changing room. You know exactly how you look in each of them and know precisely what to buy. What was the difference? Behavioral psychologists call them the “Single Evaluation” step. Experiments have shown that single evaluation steps are closer to your expectation and reality.

In case of the CIO, maybe if he had carried out the POC of the CRM on an individual basis, his choice could have been different and his satisfaction level much higher!