As we go about creating and delivering effective diagrams and presentations let’s not forget another very important step: storage. There are two ways to store something: saving with no thought for later retrieval, or saving with retrieval in mind.

How many times have you wasted valuable time looking for that diagram or presentation? How many times were you successful?

The admonition to "seek and ye shall find" may be good advice for many things but is not a good strategy when it comes to storing artifacts. This fact is illuminated in an IDC study done back in 2005. The numbers are shocking, but ring true for me personally and with my clients:

Typical knowledge workers spend a significant amount of time (37%) dealing directly with documents (creating, revising, accessing, etc.). They spend 54% of this time looking for information, and 50% of that time they do not find what they need. This means that knowledge workers (the economy’s highest paid workers) spend 27% of the time they work with documents being ineffective (not finding the information they are looking for).

The next time you create that diagram or presentation be sure to take a few minutes to create a meaningful file name, add some descriptive key words, and store it in a well thought out file system that gets backed up on a regular basis. Failure to do so may mean you join that frustrated band of seekers who do not find but just know they have the perfect artifact out there somewhere.

How about you? Do you spend most of you time seeking or finding? Please add your comments and observations below. We’d love to hear from you.