Information Vetting Best Practices

Deciding, acting, and communicating in an orchestrated manner in a critical situation requires everyone to be able to access the same reliable information simultaneously.

One best practice related to the information you consume in critical situations is to seek reliable channels for accurate information before a critical situation strikes. Look for channels that feature fact-checking and provide evidence to support claims. A corollary to this is to know which channels cannot be trusted so that if the information is cited from such a channel, you know in moments of truth that the information is unlikely to be reliable and to press for evidence to support claims.

Another is to choose credibility over spin. This applies to the information you consume and to the information you provide. Spin is a necessary and useful technique for putting your story in a positive light. For the information you consume, you must apply critical analysis to separate facts from exaggerations, inaccuracies, and half-truths to avoid being misled. For the information you provide, you must ensure it is accurate and not over-spun, as over-spinning can lead to a loss of credibility.

Yet another best practice to to analyze performance related to information as part of a situation post-mortem. Did we trust information from unreliable channels? What was the consequence? Were we uncritical of the spin in the information that we consumed? Did we overspin when providing information and sacrifice credibility? If so, how can we prevent these things in the future?

Yet another best practice is to adopt a shared 'BS separator' model that helps you separate facts from ideas, generalizations and non-facts. A shared model helps, as does a culture that supports its application.

Exercises to practice separating facts from fiction can help, too. In these, leverage statements for likely scenarios to make the information poignant. Then have participants apply whatever 'BS separator' model you chose to separate facts from fiction.

Another best practice exercise is conducting drills to address blockers to accurate information. Here again, likely scenarios make these exercises ring true for participants. For example, for a cloud services company, a likely scenario could be that different teams have different information about customer performance issues in certain regions. Have the team practice getting to the bottom of why this is happening. Is it due to delays in information dissemination? Or is it due to variations in sources of information? Whatever it is, get to the bottom of it in exercises so that when the real thing strikes, you are better prepared to sort the issue.