Information and Attention — Informing Ecological Design
I specialize in the use of data. I apply analytical tools and a collaborative work method to help my clients change data into information as they study, understand and improve performance of products, processes and plans. Since 1996, I have believed ecological integrity is a key component of performance.
Model for Improvement
Plan-Do-Study-Act
W.E. Deming
PDSA
George Box
Run Charts
daily huddles
Shigeo Shingo
Associates in Process Improvement
Go See
Isao Kato
The Improvement Guide
Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle
Walter Shewhart
Oscar Roche
Brian Maskell
Gerry Nadler
Richard Scoville
control charts
quality control
Directed Acyclic Graphs
Daniel Kahneman
Toyota Production System
Lean Accounting
Toyota
Joseph Juran
R.A. Fisher
Lloyd Provost
Jim Lancaster
Gareth Parry
Jeff Leek
IHI
Jerry Langley
The Conversation Project
Blair Sadler
Rocco Perla
Ezra Klein
Brian Joiner
Shiny App
Francis Galton
Lean Frontiers
Jeff Rich
Randomized Controlled Trials
May 17, 2026
Maintenance Is What Keeps Everything Going
May 17, 2026
May 17, 2026
April 13, 2026
Improve Conditions, Make Value Flow
April 13, 2026
April 13, 2026
February 20, 2026
A Culture of Learning
February 20, 2026
February 20, 2026
December 23, 2025
Experiment!
December 23, 2025
December 23, 2025
November 14, 2025
Designing Systems for People
November 14, 2025
November 14, 2025
October 16, 2025
Problems and Purposes: When You Have a Problem, Enlarge It
October 16, 2025
October 16, 2025
August 5, 2025
Information and Attention
August 5, 2025
August 5, 2025
June 13, 2025
Explore before Exploit, Round 2
June 13, 2025
June 13, 2025
March 31, 2025
Improving Big Systems
March 31, 2025
March 31, 2025
March 12, 2025
Why not use Job Instruction to teach Job Instruction?
March 12, 2025
March 12, 2025
Aug 5
Aug 5 Information and Attention
Kevin Little
systems in action
In 1971, Herbert Simon gave a talk, “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World” (M. Greenberger (Ed.) (1971), Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, pp 38-72). Simon, a 20th-century polymath, was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics for his research into organizational decision-making processes.<br>While Simon’s information-rich world in 1971 was driven by broadcast television and ubiquitous photocopying, his insights apply to a 2025 world with vastly more sources of information and billions of hand-held, internet-connected devices.<br>Listen and Think More, Talk Less<br>In the talk, Simon outlined the core challenge of an information-rich world:<br>“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” (pp. 40-41).<br>Aligned with his career-long contributions to organizational decision-making, Simon addressed the main question of his presentation: “How can we design organizations, business firms, and government agencies to operate effectively in such a world? How can we arrange to conserve and effectively allocate their scarce attention?” (p. 41).<br>Simon then offered a design principle, focused on information-processing systems:<br>“An information-processing subsystem (a computer or a new organization unit) will reduce the net demand on the rest of the organization’s attention only if it absorbs more information previously received by others than it produces—that is, if it listens and thinks more than it speaks.” (p. 42, italics in the original).<br>Simon continues:<br>“To be an attention conserver for an organization, an information-processing system (abbreviated IPS) must be an information condenser. It is conventional to begin designing an IPS by considering the information it will supply. In an information-rich world, however, this is doing things backwards. The crucial question is how much information it will allow to be withheld from the attention of other parts of the system.”<br>“Basically, an IPS can perform an attention-conserving function in two ways: (1) it can receive and store information that would otherwise have to be received by other systems, and (2) it can transform or filter input information into output that demands fewer hours of attention than the input.” (p. 43)<br>Reminders for my next projects—Thanks, Herb!<br>Reconsider the default and overly broad project requirement to “engage senior leadership”. Senior leaders’ attention is a scarce resource. How can a proposed project conserve the attention of leaders? What is the least amount of attention that the project requires from them?
Better operations problem-solving conserves a leader’s attention. If an...