In economics, there’s this thing called the Efficient Market Hypothesis. It says roughly that you can’t beat the stock market because all available information has already been built into the stock price. In other words, everybody – hypothetically – has equal access to all the important information about any given stock.

And the second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.

Why the Fight Club reference? We’re talking about mythical scenarios here.

Or as one commenter at The Big Picture blog said, “I am no fan of efficient market hypothesis. How it escaped into the wild from its natural habitat in the faculty dining room should be the study of many investigations and books.”

Lessons to Remember
In other words, Wall Street has a problem getting information out efficiently to all stakeholders. And look what happened to Wall Street. Not to mention our 401Ks.

What is the lesson for organizations here? First, applaud the fact that those Chicago School of Economics guys recognized the importance of information. And second, without equal access to information, efficiency is impossible. IBM’s Dan Potter cites some gruesome stats in this week’s expert POV: 42% of managers use wrong information at least once a week; and 59% of managers miss information they should have used. 

Frankly, I’ve seen better recipes for success in my spam filter.

Acting on Intelligence
So how efficient is your organization at getting information into the hands of stakeholders? And when I say information, I mean actionable data that’s been parsed and analyzed and turned into Business Intelligence.

If your organization is like most, you’re on the hunt for “a systematic way to connect analytic capabilities to decision makers,” says consultant Jim McGee in his review of “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning,” by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris.

We’d love to hear how that’s working out for you.