Getting closer to my mantra instead of my mission statement.  Guy Kawasaki often espouses the importance of having a mantra instead of a mission statement, and so does Andy Stanley.  For the longest time I struggled to put into a brief mantra what it was that I was really setting out to do.  I’m trying to decide if this is too generic and broad, but I think "Eliminating Information Frustration" is my new mantra.  It was my own personal negative encounters with information systems that has driven me to do what I do today.  And I encounter similar pain in the people I work with.  What are some of those frustrations?

  • Having to be trained and re-trained on the most mundane/routine tasks of using an application
  • Not being able to extract useful information back out of a system (as in, reports…why would I even put information into a system unless I hoped to gain some useful insight later to take action to improve my organization in some fashion?)
  • Not being able to quickly assess the information that’s relevant to me personally in my application
  • Software licensing…why do I always pay additional fees for another user’s access to the system…the information is the company’s info, why can’t we just have access to it?

I could go on.  But that’s what drives me.  Trying to eliminate information frustration.