The 3 Ways Information Moves Through Your Organization
Full Pass Filter
The next lazy CEO management secret is around the handling of information. So there are three kinds of ways to handle the information movement throughout an organization. Option one is to be a full pass filter. So for the electrical engineers in the audience, that means everything that goes in goes out, right? So I’ve got a VP of operations and all the data that he or she gains, she pushes right to me, she’s adding absolutely no value. None. Like if you’re going to just push it all to me, then I don’t need you. Right. So full pass is one of the options. And you’ll see people that refuse to suppress any information. They pass it all through.
Amplifiers
The second category of information handling is amplifiers. So they take what they receive and amplify it into the organization. Think of them using a loudspeaker or megaphone in the organization. These are the people that take little things and turn them into crises. Right. You’ve probably got somebody like that. Like, don’t you understand? Like retention’s down by 1%, we’re going to die. But there are people that will take little items and turn them into crises by amplifying the information. And frankly, sometimes obfuscation and dropping some important details. Occasionally. I’m not sure why people do this. Sometimes it’s for an agenda. Sometimes I think it’s because they just like the spin. And they create this tornado in the organization. I’m going to tell you that these are really toxic people in your organization. So if you’ve got an amplifier and you know, once in a while, we’ll run into people and they’d got a senior-level person, you know, VP plus level person, and they’re an amplifier. Like they create crises all the time. And if, once you figure out that somebody is an amplifier, you need to immediately in your brain suppress every piece of data they feed you, and you gotta debate whether they should be in the organization. If they can’t change that behavior. Salespeople, by the way, many times are amplifiers. They’re gonna amplify for their own purposes to get the organization to move in a direction. They want it to move.
Dampeners
So salespeople are classic amplifiers, organizationally speaking, not all of them, but lots of them are, but the third model is a dampener. So they take data and they figure out what’s important. And they push up to you. The critical data only, and, and the really good ones are very thoughtful about what is actually critical and what is not critical. It’s a key managerial skill set for the people that work with you to have. Can you figure out what is actually important and what is not important? And feed me the important stuff. Don’t feed me the unimportant stuff. So that is actually what you want in your life. So as the information moves up, the organization gets compressed and only the most important stuff gets to you. And it’s very refined. Now, if somebody is a negative actor, they will refine the information in the direction they want to refine it. So you have to be careful about dampeners they’ll give you only a limited amount of information, but the information they want you to have to get you to make the decision they want you to make, as opposed to just what’s important to the organization. But generally, you want dampeners, not full pass. You don’t want amplifiers of how they handle information. It’s a very coachable item. When you see somebody doing it, they’ll look, like you’re amplifying all the dang time. And so it’s the boy who cried, Wolf. I don’t trust what you say anymore, because everything’s a crisis. And therefore nothing surprises a quick story on this, this is John, the same guy, my pessimist I found out about something happening to the customer. He was in customer support, on the technical side. I’m like, Hey John, I just heard that this is happening with the customer. He goes, yeah, I’m dampening. Meaning I’ve got it. I’m handling it. It wasn’t important enough for you to know about, so I got it taken care of. I’m like, all right. And that was the end of the conversation. Right. He told me he knew about it and I didn’t need to know about it because he had it under control.