Visiting the Hilton Chicago http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/CHICHHH-Hilton-Chicago-Illinois/index.do on South Michigan Avenue a couple of weeks ago was a real trip back in time.  When you walk in the door you realize it could be 1958.  And I don’t mean that in a bad way – it’s just that the lobby with its bank of elegant old elevators looks very much the way it did fifty plus years ago.  The only way you know its 2008 is that inside the elevator they have a flat screen TV playing CNN.

This is a gigantic hotel, designed to hold conventioneers on their way to the equally cavernous McCormick Convention Center.  The only way to get from the hotel to your convention is to walk 45 minutes or take a shuttle bus (read cattle car) and when you get inside you will walk another 45 minutes to find your meeting room..  Since I was speaking at 7 a.m., leaving at 5 a.m. on foot was not an option, so I decided I would catch a bus.  However, consulting the shuttle schedule in the lobby, it was simply, utterly incomprehensible. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. 

There were 8 columns with numerous hotels in each column and probably 30 lines of 8-point typeface on destinations.  I suppose I could have stood there for awhile and eventually deciphered it, but I was getting buffeted by a crowd that was pouring in from the street after they were driven from Millennium Park across the street by a sudden downpour.

So I did the only sane thing – walked down the hall to the Concierge desk and asked them how to get to the McCormick Center in the morning.  I explained I had to be there very early.  The helpful concierge explained I should go to the 8^th Street entrance at 5:50 and catch the 6 a.m. shuttle.  That’s when it hit me.  Information (the posted shuttle schedule) is not the same as knowledge (the quick advice from a knowledgeable concierge) was what I really needed. 

Yet this distinction is not so well appreciated inside our companies.   We assume if we send an email or put out a memo that people have received what they need to do the right thing and make the right decisions. Then, when they say they “didn’t know” or “hadn’t heard” the boss wonders why.  Information is not knowledge.  You cannot assume because you put up a schedule or send out a memo that people will be able to interpret and use that information.  I don’t have all the answers but maybe you need to consider setting up your equivalent of the corporate concierge – make sure that people get easily digestible information, in a form they can use, when they need it. 

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