“[Mistake 2:] Managers need all the information they want. Most MIS designers "determine" what information is needed by asking managers what information they would like to have. This is based on the assumption that managers know what information they need and want.”

—  Russell L. Ackoff

As cited in: Merrill J. Riley (1981) Management information systems. p. 114.
1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[Mistake 2:] Managers need all the information they want. Most MIS designers "determine" what information is needed by …" by Russell L. Ackoff?
Russell L. Ackoff photo
Russell L. Ackoff70
Scientist 1919–2009

Related quotes

“Information practice… consists of two activities that we may call diagnosis and prevention. Diagnosis is identifying what is the most probable information need of a user in a particular state of information want. Provision is deciding what action is most likely to meet that need. Information science seeks to understand the potential range of user situations giving rise to information want and needs; to develop methods of identifying the actual information needed; to understand and expand the range of possible ways of satisfying information need; and to develop methods of deciding what way is most likely to be effective in a particular case.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Meeting the challenge (2009), p. xxii-xxiii; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

“The information you have is not the information you want. The information you want is not the information you need. The information you need is not the information you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay”

Peter L. Bernstein (1919–2009) American academic

Source: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“Unless the information overload to which managers are subjected is reduced, any additional information made available by an MIS cannot be expected to be used effectively.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967, p. 148.

Hans Blix photo

“It was to do with information management. The intention was to dramatise it.”

Hans Blix (1928) Swedish politician

BBC TV's Breakfast With Frost, February 8, 2004

Yuval Noah Harari photo

“In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“I do not deny that most managers lack a good deal of information that they should have, but I do deny that this is the most important informational deficiency from which they suffer. It seems to me that they suffer more from an overabundance of irrelevant information.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967, p. 147.

“Business System Planning (BSP) and Business Information Control Study (BICS) are two information system planning study methodologies that specifically employ enterprise analysis techniques in the course of their analysis. Underlying the BSP and BICS analysis are the data management problems that result from systems design approaches that optimize the management of technology at the expense of managing the data.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Business Systems Planning and Business Information Control Study: A comparison, 1982, p. 31

W. Edwards Deming photo

“Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

“We have overwhelming evidence that available information plus analysis does not lead to knowledge. The management science team can properly analyse a situation and present recommendations to the manager, but no change occurs. The situation is so familiar to those of us who try to practice management science that I hardly need to describe the cases.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

C. West Churchman, "Managerial acceptance of scientific recommendations" in California Management Review, Vol 7 (1964), p. 33; cited in Management Systems (1971), by Peter P. Schoderbek, p. 199
1960s - 1970s

Peter F. Drucker photo

“What the worker needs is to see the plant as if he were a manager. Only thus can he see his part, from his part he can reach the whole. This "seeing" is not a matter of information, training courses, conducted plant tours, or similar devices. What is needed is the actual experience of the whole in and through the individual's work.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

1930s- 1950s, The New Society (1950)

Related topics