Information for Action

From Peter F. Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century (HarperBusiness, 1999), in the chapter “Information Challenges” (p. 130). The line closes a short passage on what executives should do with data: first “ELIMINATE data that do not pertain to the information they need,” then organize, analyze, and interpret what is left, and “focus the resulting information on ACTION.”

Drucker’s test for a fact is what it does to a decision: whether it changes the call you would make, or how sure you are of it. A number that moves neither is not information you need, however much of it piles up. This is why he warns that “the mere quantity of data is taken to mean information”: a fat stack of numbers feels like knowing more, the way a thick phone book feels like an answer, though neither tells you whom to call. So the real work comes before you act, in sorting the facts that bear on a decision from the many that do not.