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Mastering Information across Economic Cycles 169

accomplishing tasks. The improvement flows from the
employees whose jobs depend on information to accomplish
their objective gives them more time for pure value-added
work. Much of this improvement is in cycle time reduction.

Another impact of information competency on employee
productivity is properly aligning the right level of infor-
mation-related work with the right level of employee. As
discussed earlier, information-related work represents almost
90% of the employee’s productive time.

Figure 7.13 depicts a director in a large US bank prior to
transforming their information competencies. This director
spent 25% of the time with information-related activities
that were efficient for creating maximum added value
for their position. The director ends up doing lower-
level work and not creating level-appropriate value or deci-
sions. For example, the director spends time working with
analyst-level information in order to make director-level
decisions.

While from a cost-effectiveness perspective, the inefficien-
cies of information work at inappropriate levels quickly
add up, the market opportunity costs from the director not

Director’s Level of Information Work

Non-Productive
2%

Admin Director
30% 25%

Analyst Manager
13% 15%

Technical Figure 7.13
15%