Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Information Hiding
Even in these days of seemingly excess data and communication, team
members can be impoverished in an information sense. We have come a
long way since there were only a limited number of copies of a printed
manual that “belonged” to someone who kept it locked. Many behavior
patterns have, however, not changed. There is still a lot of information that
is being kept hidden. Sometimes, it is no more than a reflection of the
personality of the one withholding the information. For someone else, it
could be a desire to become the “go-to” person for something. For others,
it could be the need to “become indispensable,” getting a sense of “job
security” or “power” through such an arrangement. Managers must make
conscious efforts to address such situations, as such behavior can be a drain
on productivity and morale. The task of challenging such behavior becomes
difficult when those demonstrating it are “indispensable prima donnas.” But
challenged they must be in the interests of the larger team.
The tactics employed for information hiding are several. They mostly
work off the fact that there is a cost to information search. By making
the cost of the search excessive or prohibitive, one can dissuade access
to the information. Edward Tufte in his topic, and also in his lectures,
writes about how magicians hide information through distraction — they
are waving something in their left hand drawing the audience's attention
away from the sleight of hand occurring with the right hand. Similar
distraction tactics are employed when one embeds important information
in prolix e-mails, when “shared” files are updated without informing others,
or when relevant topics are always “taken offline.” In matrix organizations,
the employee may share the information with only one of the lines of
command; this often happens with vacations, where the employee informs
the administrative manager but the project manager is caught by surprise.
Merely asking for more information to be documented is not the
solution to the problem of non-information-sharing. A person wishing to
hide information can still do so within voluminous documentation that is
relatively useless, quickly out of date, or totally overwhelming (sometimes
used in legal situations). The fact that the required information is not
there may be discovered when it is too late. We discuss the issues with
Documentation in Chapter 15.
Modes of Communication
Nonverbal Communication
It is said that nearly 80 percent of communication is nonverbal. Displeasure
can be conveyed by silence, disinterest through the body language, or
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