Information in organisations exists on a spectrum:

• Verified and structured
• Incomplete or ambiguous
• Speculative or misleading

All of it influences decisions.

In practice:

• High-integrity information provides stability
• Low-integrity information may provide early signals

Neither is sufficient alone.

The Governing Capability

The critical capability is not information quality alone, but the ability to interpret information appropriately under uncertainty

This requires:

• Awareness of provenance
  → Where did this come from, and how much do I trust it?

 

• Explicit handling of uncertainty
  → What don’t we know, and what assumptions are we making?

 

• Dialogue across perspectives
  → Who sees this differently, and why?

 

• Testing through action (Gemba)
  → What happens when this meets reality?

 

• Acceptance of consequence
  → If this is wrong, what happens—and am I prepared to own it?

The Failure Mode

When this capability is weak:

When “wisdom” is assumed rather than practiced:

• Confidence outruns evidence
• Weak signals become stories
• People see what they want to see
• Decisions are made without consequence awareness

 

👉 Result: intelligent people making poor decisions convincingly

 

The Governing Law

Information does not determine decisions.
Interpretation does — and interpretation must be disciplined.

Across the Domains

• Ethical Domain
  → prevents misuse of low-quality or misleading information
• Sensemaking Domain
  → core activity: interpreting mixed-quality inputs
• Relational Domain
  → dialogue tests interpretation
• Learning Domain
  → judgement improves over time
• Action Domain (Gemba)
  → interpretation meets consequence

👉 Information quality feeds the system. Interpretation determines whether the system learns or drifts.

In a VUCA world, the problem is not imperfect information — it is undisciplined interpretation.

🔗This source note is also relevant to:

• Sensemaking → Meaning is constructed