Journals of the Information Entrepreneur - Jacqueline stockwell
Welcome to "The Journals of the Information Entrepreneur"! Hosted by Jacqueline Stockwell, CEO and Founder of Leadership Through Data, this podcast is dedicated to empowering and inspiring information leaders across the globe. Jacqueline shares her expertise in revolutionizing information management training and delivering it in a way that captures the audience's attention and ensures their time is well spent. In each episode, Jacqueline engages with industry experts and thought leaders to discuss the latest trends, challenges, and best practices in information management.
Journals of the Information Entrepreneur - Jacqueline stockwell
034 Information Architecture (The What, Why, and How) with Rachel Mitchell
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Is your company losing time and money because your information is messy? Information Architecture (IA) is the key plan that connects your rules to your technology. But most companies miss it!
In this episode, Jaki talks with Rachel Mitchell, a top consultant at Leadership Through Data. Rachel explains why bad IA costs CEOs big money, how to avoid the "messy data trap" when using AI, and gives you simple steps to clean up your information chaos today.
If you struggle with risk, rules, or finding files fast, this show gives you the plan for success.
[00:48] What is IA? Rachel explains that IA is about how we sort, group, and label information. Its main job is to make it easy for users to find what they need.
[02:03] For the CEO: If you don't have IA, you just have a giant "data lake with no structure." This means you can't control it, and it costs you money.
[02:59] Why IA is Critical: Without good IA, you cannot manage Data Lifecycles (knowing what to keep and what to delete). This is the biggest problem companies face.
[04:20] Protection: IA acts like dividers in your data, helping you protect sensitive information and decide who can see what (Permissions and Protection).
[06:04] IA and Saving Time: Good IA makes it easy for people to "do the right thing." You save massive amounts of time when people stop having to search for files.
[10:30] IA and Big Plans: How a clear IA helps with major goals like Digital Transformation and meeting GDPR/Privacy rules by showing you which data is high-risk.
[11:30] The AI Danger: If your data is messy, AI tools like Copilot will just make the mess "amplified." Your structure needs to be clean before you use AI.
[12:36] Step One to Fix IA: Rachel's advice is to find your business classification (the core list of company functions, often in your retention schedule). This is your clean starting point.
[13:48] IA in Microsoft 365 (M365): How to use your M365 tools (Teams, SharePoint) as simple "Lego bricks" based on function to build a strong, future-proof structure.
[15:44] The Power of Metadata: Metadata (data about data) is key, but don't ask users to tag things manually! We talk about using templates to automate tagging.
[18:16] Balancing the Rules and the User: How to build IA that gives users the freedom they want (speed, flexibility) while still keeping the necessary rules in place.
[19:59] Who is in Charge?: We discuss who should own the Information Architecture plan in a company.
[20:29] Get AI Ready: How a strong IA allows you to put "Hands Off" labels on sensitive data, making sure AI tools only look at the information you want them to see.
[22:06] Jaki's Final Action: The one quick task you can do this week to start improving your IA.
LinkedIn: (4) Rachel Mitchell | LinkedInBook: Blooming Good Information Management
Hello and welcome to today's show. I'm Jacqueline Stockwell, CEO and founder at Leadership Through Data. I inspire and motivate information leaders across the world. Hello and welcome to the show. Today I'm back with Rachel Mitchell.
SPEAKER_01My name is Rachel Mitchell. I am a self-confessed information governance control freak and I'm the principal consultant for leadership through data. Amazing. So what is information architecture, Rach? So information architecture is the most important thing to be able to translate our policy and governance framework into technology. So information architecture is about how we structure, how we group, how we collect our information and data. But most importantly, it's about the user experience. So it's about how users look and feel with the data and how they can use it for their processes. So it's always user-facing. And the two things we need to remember as well, on top of that, it's not just about structure, it's about searchability and findability, slightly different things. And it's also about classification of information and the relationships between it. So for example, if I'm working on a process like payroll, I have two classifications of data there potentially, HR and finance, but my architecture needs to be conscious that in order to process payroll, those two classifications are working together as a relationship.
SPEAKER_02Okay, brilliant. So I was there with you. For a CEO, how can you break that down to one simple sentence, really basic English as to why they would need an information architecture in their organization or a team one?
SPEAKER_01So without an information architecture, you have effectively a data lake with no structure, which you're very difficult to add, control, retention, and manage it. So it's going to cost you more money in the long run to actually use and implement your data.
SPEAKER_02No. So it's like a massive storm of information then, pretty much in that lake, if you don't have an information architecture to navigate with a compass. Okay, amazing. Thanks for that. So what is so when an organization fails to invest in a good IA, what are the kind of tangible, costly outcomes for it?
SPEAKER_01Okay, it becomes impossible to do data lifecycle management. That's the biggie. The biggie for me. And do you know, as an somebody that's worked in public sector for a lot of years and somebody that's now going into organizations, nobody does data lifecycle management well. We just don't. It's so difficult. But if you don't get information architecture right, there is no hope of you doing it well. Because effectively you're trying to manage different classes of information, which means kind of different flavours of information, some of which you need to keep for like one week, some of which you might need to keep for 10 years. How are you going to be able to do that if you haven't got your classification organized within your information architecture to apply that data lifecycle management?
SPEAKER_02So the different fish in your lake, right? So one you fish out, right? Then one you keep in, and then one you keep there for longer for the ecosystem of the lake. You know, when you talk about your classification, let's kind of put it in like a storyteller kind of telling perspective. That's what kind of what I'm thinking when you're when you're describing this.
SPEAKER_01So it's almost like going from an unorganized lake of fish to actually categorizing those fish into those that you can catch because there's some that you should be throwing back because they're too little, and those that you exactly that, those that you can catch and keep, and those that you catch and throw back. So all those kind of different decisions we're making about information and data. The other thing about an information architecture, though, as well as data lifecycle management, is protection and permissions model. Can you imagine trying to say to that lake which fishermen? Now I'm trying to go with your analogy. Which fishermen can fish in which part of that lake if you've got no sort of dividers about where the professionals should fish versus the amateurs, say, or the children versus the adults. If we have no kind of architecture, how are we going to be able to protect that more sensitive information that shouldn't be accessed by everyone? Or the fish that not everybody should catch? The champion fish that are just for those competition anglers. So I just think that without an information architecture, it's impossible to do all of these things: data loss prevention, information protection, data lifecycle management. It's critical for all three.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. And I just love that you're coming with my storytelling idea here, right? Thanks. Are you a keen fisher then? You're talking about competition and angler. I don't know anything about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what are those little fishing nets with a cane and a little net on the end? That's about my limit.
SPEAKER_02Nice, but we get we get kind of the principles you're talking about. So if you don't so I kind of want to talk about uh, you know, loss of productivity around IA. So there's lots of kind of staff and organizations that can't find information and then staff become unproductive. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It still never fails to amaze me that information and data is our most critical asset to any organization and we just don't manage it very well. I just don't, I just don't understand the logic about not investing that amount of time, which is not a lot and it's not a great big cost, to get that information architecture right because ultimately it saves time for people finding stuff, it saves time for people create architecture. So if I'm doing an information architecture course, my way of doing things, I want to make it as easy as possible for people to do the right thing. That's what an information architecture does. So if I say to somebody, so I'm not gonna go with the fish analogy because I can't do that in my head. You're good.
SPEAKER_02So if I say another story, go and have a story.
SPEAKER_01So if I say to somebody, say coming back to my HR analogy that I was using earlier, if I say to somebody in HR, as long as you store your stuff in that folder, I will make sure that we've got the retention applied, we've got the data loss prevention, we've got the information protection. What's not to like? They haven't got a tag stuff, there's no resource load on them. We're making it as simple as possible through the information architecture. So I don't understand how um I speak to them, they do get it because that's the sort of language I put put it in. That actually the improvement we're getting just by investing that front-end information architecture is massive in terms of the bottom line for the organization. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And is that because it's not a tangible, something tangible? They can't hold it. Uh so it comes intangible. And I think that's where the storytelling, and I know you didn't want to talk about the fish, and that's fine, because you should always tell stories of things you're confident with confident with and have huge knowledge of. But we've kind of talked about this around growing plants, haven't we? And like the ecosystem of plants growing and implanting tests and kind of all of that around around life cycles as well. But I think that there's a way that you can because it's not tangible, yeah, um, they can't hold it, they can't see it, they can't understand it, that then there's a lack of understanding. Does that make sense from an organization's perspective?
SPEAKER_01Definitely. And I think it's not just at the sort of the senior management level or the grown-ups as I like to call them. I think it's through all the different levels that people people deep down understand the value of the information and data they're using, but they don't kind of want to pay at lip service, it's somebody else's problem. So it's about the storytelling is exactly right, but it's about doing it from their perspective, not from our perspective. So I went into an organization not that long ago, and they'd done a presentation ready to give to the senior management about a remediation project for Microsoft, and it was talking about things like statutory compliance, and if we don't do this, then no, because that's important to us, but it's not important to them. What's important to them is actually if you do this process rather than it being like this, it's like this, and it's saving time, it's saving money. So it's it's making things relatable, and I don't think we're very good at that either. And money, cost terms, cashable savings for data lifecycle management.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and I do agree, and there's a massive thing around benefits, so the benefits to the organization. So when you're talking about an EDRMS implementation, actually, we shouldn't be using those big words because we understand them, but you know, the organization doesn't or a CEO doesn't. Like back to the start, I'm like, yeah, totally, that's your bag, and mine too. But like you're in it and I'm high level on it. So there's a there's a level of understanding, isn't there? That actually, if we talk about EDRMS implementation, we should be saying it's a system that makes you find information 80% quicker than previous. So you have that added benefit for the person, the organization, just around our terminology. It is how does you know sound information architecture directly support you know business strategies such as digital transformation and AI implementation? And certainly it's like linking that to GDPR and privacy data protection.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's all about making sure that you're identifying the flavours of your information again. So actually, what has got higher risk? How should we be managing that information? What's got higher value to our organization? So you might have things like intellectual property rights, or if you're working in a drug company, say that actually the fundamental being of your organization is protecting that intellectual property. So it's about thinking about how we're sort of looking at the flavours of our information to say, what do we need to protect more and therefore put more resource to, and what actually is transient that we can get rid of. Back to the AI discussion. I was on a really good copilot course the other day. I was teaching how to use copilot in a safe information governance way. And we were talking about this new term. So we used to say rubbish in, rubbish out for things like AI. Well, now we talk about rubbish in, rubbish amplified. Because just think about this scenario. If you did a copilot draft, say, Jacket, and you didn't check it, so you didn't add that human element to make sure that what it had come out with was factually correct, that then goes into my record as an organization. I then come and look for something and it actually pulls me your document as fact. I then use your document to source a new piece of records information in my organization. It's amplifying that rubbish. So A, make sure we're checking everything, but B, getting rid of that stuff in our organization that we shouldn't have because it's reputationally damaging. Otherwise, we're going to be amplifying that too.
SPEAKER_02That's a really good point there, Rage. So back to AR, back to IA. Always getting round the wrong way. AI, IA. So this is lovely talking about this in theory. We've talked about loads of stuff. So where does a team actually start when they realise that IA is broken?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so the first thing to do is to get a good business classification in my mind. You normally have one as an organization. If you have a retention schedule, it's normally the first two columns of your retention schedule because it will say what function you have and what activities come under that function, like HR might have recruitment, might have people management. That then gives you your fundamental building blocks to work out how we take that business classification, how we then work with our people in different teams across the business and decide how we translate what they've currently got into a lovely new clean classification-based information architecture.
SPEAKER_02Beautiful, Ray. Thank you very much. So when you've built those components, what are the core components that you need to define?
SPEAKER_01So for me, you need to be able to, um slightly not answering your question, sorry.
SPEAKER_02But one of the don't do that, Ray!
SPEAKER_01Answer my question. So once you've sort of built, I always like to talk about Lego bricks, okay? People talk about a Teams first approach. So my Lego brick is a Microsoft 365 group, a SharePoint site, and a team. I take that Lego brick based on classification, which means I can apply my retention, my data loss prevention, and my protection to my Lego brick. I then build out my architecture with those Lego bricks to make sure that it's really easy for us to apply everything at that highest sort of site level or group level. So that for me is the key to all of this. It doesn't give you a perfect result because nothing ever is going to be perfect. You're gonna need to compromise and have a digital retention schedule potentially, but we need to make sure that it's practical, not for us, for the users.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. And how does that um how does that link with using Microsoft 365 in terms of the IA?
SPEAKER_01So effectively, I build my Lego bricks out by using the group team SharePoint sites. And um within Microsoft, we can then replicate it in there. If you've already done a COVID star rollout and it's a complete mess and you haven't got that little sort of triangle of your group, your team, your SharePoint, we can do that. We can help you put those triangles back together to build our infrastructure out. So it's easy once you start to think about it in those terms to actually then embed that into your Microsoft 365, and we can then have a future-proofed architecture as well, because each of your little building blocks is based on a specific function. So even if those functions move around within as part of a big department, say, it doesn't matter. We just move them around like a big jigsaw piece. So it's a really logical, simple way to do it.
SPEAKER_02I love that, and I love the way you make it sound so simple and easy, easy to apply. So, Rachel, let's talk about metadata. So you often hear metadata is key. Can you explain the relationship between a well-structured taxonomy and effective metadata tagging and how that ultimately helps the user find information?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I'm gonna set my stall here and now. Do not expect users to tag information manually. I just do not think users have either the inclination or the time unless it's really high value or high-risk information. So that's my first rule. Do not expect anyone to do anything, which is why my save here and then everything is sucked to it is normally my way to go. But if I am thinking about using metadata, the best thing to do is to make sure that you're embedding your metadata within the SharePoint capability so that wherever we're using that same kind of language, if you like. So, say for example, let's use an example. Say we have a metadata that relates to an employee number. If we have that embedded in the system, we can use that for all different purposes. So, for example, if Rachel Mitchell leaves the organization, everything that relates to Rachel Mitchell, as long as it's tagged with that employee number through templates and other things, not through users having to do that, then it means that we can find all that information and then apply our attention to it, say with event-based labelling. So for me, it's making sure that we are effectively using metadata in that way to drive process, but also we need to funnel our people in our organization to try and choose metadata rather than doing sort of free text creation of things. So using templates is really good where you're channeling them to make certain selections of information or metadata, and that all improves the quality of data. And we know what good data quality does, it underpins all good decision making. To data, there's so many different important uses for it, but just don't expect your users to do lots of different actions because they ain't gonna do it.
SPEAKER_02Amazing, amazing. So let's talk about that, let's talk about user experience. So, how do you balance the needs of the business from compliance and retention with the needs of the end user who wants speed, they want to find things quickly when designing your architecture?
SPEAKER_01So I think they're actually hand in hand because if you do it on a sort of functional way, 99 times out of a hundred, your structure is based on functions like HR Finance, which has common data, so people work collectively together. Um there are some exceptions to that rule, but we can cope with those. Normally, you are giving an architecture to someone and saying, like I've said earlier, as long as you play in this space, I don't really care what you do because it's safe. I've already protected the boundary of that space. So the first thing is they've got freedom. And I also like to give the owners of the sites, the SharePoint sites and the team, freedom to create channels, private, shared. I know some records managers are quaking at this point because they because it is more difficult for us to manage. But from a user perspective, private channels are amazing, shared channels are amazing. So why are we sort of cutting off our organizational nose to spite our face by not allowing users to have that freedom of using them? So that's what I think where my tipping point is. And I always say on a spectrum of kind of purism records management versus practical, I'm much more in the practical space.
SPEAKER_02Nice, nice. So a big question for you, right? Don't kill me. Um so who owns information architecture within an organization?
SPEAKER_01I think it's information governance, and by that, I think it's whether whether you call it the records manager, whether you call it the information manager, whether you call it the information governance lead, whoever it is, I think they own the architecture because it's based on business classification. IT and other technical colleagues own how that's embedded in the technical architecture. So they're the people that will help us implement it, but I think it's us that owns the architecture design. Agreed. Agreed. So the future is AI.
SPEAKER_02Everyone wants to talk about it. So how does a strong, well-defined information architecture make an organization AI ready?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so again, it comes back to that sort of segmentation of your data so that we've got wherever possible, everything is open and free-flowing, and we can use it with our AI tooling. But if we've got a good information architecture that actually identifies where our more sensitive information is, there are new tools available, for example, in Copilot, where we can actually apply a sensitivity label to that material that says co-pilot hands-off. So we can do that using auto-labeling, using an E5 license, or in different ways if you haven't got E5. But effectively, if we've got an architecture that compartmentalizes that data, then we can say to our AI tooling, that's out of bounds. If we haven't, it means people do have to manually tag things to say, actually, within my big mess of data, this is difficult to use in AI. People aren't going to do that. Much more simple to um set the parameters for what AI can look at within your organization and what what it can't.
SPEAKER_02So thank you, Rachel. So just wrapping that all up, it's been absolutely sensational to have you on the show. If the listeners have been inspired to start improving their IA today, what is one small actionable task that they can complete this week?
SPEAKER_01This week, I would say dust off your business classification. Go and look at it in your retention schedule. Is it comprehensive? If not, do a bit of tidying up with that. If you think yours is in a really good place, I'm gonna do a second action as well. Think about a digital retention schedule. So think about where you can bring together, say, under certain business classifications or flavours of information, multiple retentions to one so that you can have a much simpler retention to go into your technical architecture.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. Thank you so much, Rachel. And thank you for coming today. If the listeners want to reach out, please go to Rachel via LinkedIn. Um, she is sensational and I love working with her. So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you, everyone, for listening. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the journals of the information entrepreneur with me, Jacqueline Stockwell. I hope you found this episode inspiring and helpful and have some takeaway tips that can be useful to you. If you liked this episode, please like, review, and share it with your friends. Your support helps us reach more information leaders to stay inspired and listen to great content. Want to test out your strengths and weaknesses and measure it against our empower framework? Please complete the scorecard. It's a great way to improve and evaluate your skills. You can find the scorecard at the end of the description of this podcast. Stay tuned for a new podcast every Thursday and remember to be bold, be brave, and be beautiful.