QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "What I do is help people make the transition from the Industrial-Age management style to the Information-Age management style." -Larry English information management consultant

Information Age demands adaptation

Roll over, Adam Smith. The Information Age is here to stay.

Information technology (or IT, as true info tech gurus like to say) is changing forever the way the world does business. To keep their factories running, stores stocked or shipments arriving just in time, companies large and small are relying on carefully managed computer databases.

That means corporations are slowly changing the way they manage their most important resources.

And we're not talking about land, labor and capital. The buzzwords of the Information Age are "knowledge worker," and "information resource management,"

Larry English ought to know. The soft-spoken Texan with a M.Div. from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is one of a handful of independent information management consultants in the world. (There's not much difference between translating Greek and writing computer programs, he says.)

English happens to live in Brentwood, but don't expect to find him at home. The president of Information Impact International Inc. is usually on the road somewhere in North America or Europe telling executives that the developed world is in the midst of a transformation as profound as the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution. "What I do," the 47-year-old English says, "is help people make the transition from the Industrial-Age management style to the Information-Age management style."

He has no shortage of clients.

It seems corporations, especially American corporations, have spent more than $1 billion developing or buying software they can't use. They've spent even more on software that doesn't do all that it's needed to.

That's because business is thinking about information management the same way it did when filing cabinets were considered high tech.

Dozens of people enter the same information into databases that can't be shared. Laser-printed reports proliferate-- in triplicate. According to a 1992 study, 70 percent of the reports American business generates are merely used to re-input information into another database within the same company.

Managers spend hours looking for inconsistencies. The potential for fraud, poor customer service and general confusion is needlessly high.

Enter Larry English.

English is enthusiastic about data management. His interest really goes back to the ninth grade in San Angelo, Texas, when he collected and classified insects for a science project. "From that point on I fell into learning," he says.

Ask him a question, and he jumps up to grab hardbound books with passages glowing fluorescent yellow. They are well-known works to the IT world: James Martin on information systems, Peter Keen and John Naisbett on the application of information technology to business, Peter Drucker and Peter Senge on management.

English has formed a synthesis of their ideas and his own notions of information management, Like a preacher, he teaches with a parable.

Just as the six blind men who felt different parts of the elephant and, trying to describe it from their own points of view, "rail on in utter ignorance of what each other mean," information users aren't getting the elephant-sized picture. Instead of looking at data as a resource to be shared by everyone in the company, business leaders are thinking only about getting specific results: entering insurance claims, keeping track of inventory, recording payments.

What should really be central to their organization is the information itself, not the processes individuals put it through, English says. But how to make blind employees see? Switch metaphors.

This ex-trumpeter who is a board member of the Cumberland Chamber Orchestra wants businesses to take an "orchestral approach" to managing data. Top managers should act as "conductors," but all employees should have access to every note of information, regardless of what section of the company they work in.

For example, employees in the shipping department should have access to much of the same information as sales representatives. If a customer changes his or her address, only one employee would need to enter the data, and every department from shipping to sales to accounts receivable would instantly have the same information. Less work, fewer irate customers.

The key to Information Age-management, English says, is looking at data as a resource to be shared throughout a company by workers who have a common understanding of the information's meaning.

Instead of seeing just a trunk or a tail, they see the whole elephant. Instead of dealing with data they don't understand, they're knowledgeable musicians who can play their own part and read all of the music.

"Information management is a business function, not just a technical function," English says. "A chief information officer should be part of the executive team. They're just as important as a chief financial officer or a human resources director."

But don't look for new middle management jobs in a company with info tech know-how.

English looks for hierarchical management structures to continue flattening out as "knowledge workers" become more proficient and take on more responsibility, "Information intermediaries" who merely pass data from point to point are tomorrow's dinosaurs.

If you're not doing something to generate information and add value to a product or service, your job may be in trouble English says.

Becalel Gavish, a professor of computer and information systems at Vanderbilt's Owen School of Management, agrees. "Even if a company doesn't want to shrink to get less managers, the competitive pressures force them to," he says. "Companies fired employees 15 to 20 years ago that were mostly blue-collar employees, 90 to 95 percent. Firings in the last five years have been mostly in the managerial level.

"Decision-making isn't necessarily any better, but clearly it is faster. Each manager has more authority and more responsibility."

As information technology becomes less and less expensive, Gavish expects its use to grow.

Now it is becoming more common, for companies to output data on the Internet to share it with other companies and customers, he says.

However, not many companies would want every item of data to have the same level of security. Companies can restrict access to some information, but old-fashioned trust is the only thing that will make new information management systems a go.