Situation: Informative situation

Hi, welcome to the twenty second day of The Leads Intellectual challenge: a 30-day challenge with Fatai Kareem. If you would like to know about contractual situation, read the twenty first day challenge here.

Today, he will be discussing another type of situation known as informative situation and its application. Why do you attend seminar? Why do you stop when the traffic light is red? Why do you make enquiry about a product? 

Well, understanding informative situation will enable you to answer questions like the ones above. What is informative situation?

Informative situation is a situation in which you gain more understanding about a condition. It gives you the opportunity to gain or share your ideas, knowledge, skills or experience. It usually involves communication with the aim of promoting understanding, encouraging action, improving performance, and enhancing engagement. It can occur in form of presentation, speech, discussion, instruction, manual, training session, seminar, show, lecture, announcement, etc.

This situation usually has an actor (someone who is sharing an information, knowledge, skills or experience) and audience (the person or group of people receiving the information, knowledge, skills or experience). The actor can be a teacher, lecturer, trainer, speaker, even a company that owns or shares the information, etc. While the audience can be the students, employees, trainee, consumers targeted by a marketing company, etc.

This situation occurs when there is a need to share an information, knowledge, skills or experience with another person or group of people. Also, when there is a need to have an information, knowledge, skills or experience. The need for this situation shows its purpose, which needs to be achieved when it occurs. Therefore, there is need for understanding the necessary steps to be taken in order to achieve an effective informative situation. These steps can serve as guidelines:

• Define the purpose of the situation. This will enable you to answer the questions like "why do you need to share or have the information, knowledge, skills or experience?", "What problem will it solve?", "What kind of value will you gain from it?".

• Determine your target. This will enable you to answer questions like: "from whom can I get the targeted value or benefits?", "Where can I get in touch with them?", "how do I communicate with them to achieve the desirable outcome?", " When can I communicate with them?".

• Determine the means of making the situation to occur. This will enable you to answer questions like: "what channel of communication can I use to communicate with my target and achieve my goal?", "What kind of information, knowledge, skills or experience can I share through the channel?".

• Determine the metric for measuring the success or failure of the situation. This will enable you to answer questions like: "How will I know if the purpose of the situation is fulfilled?", "how effective are the channels used in communicating with my target?", "how will I know if my targets are satisfied?".

• Determine the cost of making the situation to occur. This will enable you to answer questions like: "Does the situation worth occuring?", "What is the amount of time, effort and other resources required to make the situation to occur?", "What impact will it have if the situation fails to achieve its purpose?".

• Determine the controlling measures to be used in monitoring and managing the situation. This will enable you to answer questions like: "how will I know when things go wrong?", "what will I do when things go wrong?", "how do I manage change that can affect the effectiveness of the situation?".

• Determine the feedback mechanism for the situation. This will enable you to answer questions like: "Are my targets satisfied?", "what needs to be improved?", "what are the challenges faced by engaging with the information?".

In addition to the steps above, the following conditions are useful for achieving an effective informative situation:

• accurate and complete information must be shared at the right time and with the right set of people.

• the information must be in an understandable form.

• the process of sharing and receiving the information must be simple and free from interruptions.

• measures for monitoring and controlling this process must be put in place.

• the information must be secured and free from being manipulated.

Examples of informative situation

• the interaction between an entrepreneur making a business pitch to inform investors of the feasibility of his business idea.

• classroom environment in which a teacher is teaching the students.

• a consumer reading the manual for the product he purchases to understand how to use the product.

• an interaction between a driver and traffic light.

Case study

1. BBBB Ltd just launch a new product. It wants to bring the new product to the market. What should it do? How can it take advantage of informative situation?

2. FT school is facing the challenge of mass failure of its students. Although, the teachers are teaching very well. How can FT school benefit from informative situation? How can it put in place an informative situation that will solve the problem? 

3. Khadija wants to pay Kate an amount of money. She sends the money to the bank account of Kate without informing her. Kate, who is also expecting the same amount of money from another person assumes that it is the other person that sends the money. After 3 days, she calls Khadija to ask for the money. Khadija claims that she has sent the money, but she is unable to provide an evidence. Who is to be blamed? How can effective informative situation be useful in this case?

Disclaimer: All named used are for illustration purpose.

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