We will focus on 10 reasons why knowledge is power. Without further ado…

1. Access to information gives you control over your KPI (Key Performance Indicators). If you know before the others what your key results are, it allows you to prepare in advance. In case of unfavorable results, it allows you to gather additional arguments why you are not meeting your targets or work on a story that would present your accomplishments in better light than anticipated. To illustrate this point with an example — I still remember one of the Brand Managers in one of my former corporate jobs, who stated during the high-profile new product review that market failed to respond. On the other hand, if your performance measures turn out to be positive — knowing about it in advance allows you to prepare the celebration and/or favorable PR inside of your company.
2. Ability to make informed decisions. Here the situation is simple — the more you know, the more data-based and well-grounded decisions you can make. In terms of basic illustration of this principle, let me just say that I am strongly convinced that many of us investing in stocks, currencies and goods would love to be the first to know about the factors that might impact their price.
3. Ability to react faster than others to changing environment. This point is clearly linked to the point number two. In today's rapidly changing world, access to the data that allows you to see these changes in real-time — or better yet — anticipate some of those, is worth its weight in gold.
4. Ability to avoid landmines by unconsciously stepping on somebody's toes. This is one of these reasons directly linked to the individual power-building efforts. The more you are aware of your surroundings, the more attention you pay to your organizational context (for example: who hangs out with whom, who eats lunch with whom, who is a part of an informal group, what sort of non-verbal cues are exchanged during meetings) the less probable it is that you will step on a proverbial political landmine resulting in unintended conflict with your bosses or co-workers.
5. Sharing knowledge stands for reputation. Reputation in turn helps to build one of the core sources of organizational influence — that is expert power. If you are the one person perceived as an expert in the given area, your opinions, time, and presence would be valued — the more so, of course, if your area of interest is in demand. To give one of the examples: Artificial Intelligence experts are now being literally bought out from different companies, exactly for the reason of their knowledge.
6. Demonstrating expertise is essential for building personal brand. If you can create unique content, which is of value to your readers, observers, or listeners — you will also be able to build the audience to share your knowledge with. This audience might turn into following, which in turn might generate interesting collaboration leads.
7. Being a singular point of access allows steering information flow. This element is one of the most universal and at the same time most powerful sources of influence. If you are in a privileged position of a person, who has access to valuable data — you are also at liberty to decide with whom, when and to what extent you would share this resource. As a result, you gain direct leverage over anyone who would be interested in the insights that you have to share. As an anecdote — let me put it like this — in the older times, when sales data needed to go through Insights Department verification for accuracy and quality before being published broadly in organization, the popularity of Insights and Analytics department that I led was suddenly skyrocketing on the day of data arrival. The number of lunch invitations, coffee break requests and accidental donut-time invitations was unmatched to any other day of the month…
8. Information can also fuel innovation and related progress. If you are able to leverage discoveries and research results of others, you are also able to help advance the given field and not only add to the overall human knowledge capital (being grandiloquent just for a moment there) but also create new solutions, products and resulting revenue streams.
9. Information as such is also a product, which allows for direct profits (by being bought and sold) and influence. I specifically mean social media here. For all social platforms we are effectively their products (or more specifically — our, at times highly private, data is). Not to dwell into political battles that we recently saw being directly influenced by steered content management, I can stick to more basic example of multiple ads popping up in my browser after I carelessly searched on-line (without checking all potential anti-tracking defenses) for best places to buy garden tools. I mean… how many spades I might need?
10. Last, but definitely not least, information is fueling personal growth. The more you strive to know about your surrounding world, the more independently and autonomically you can make your decisions. The more you can question and the more you can potentially change.

So how to get access to more information in 3 quick steps?

• Read, listen or watch informative content.
• Connect with people who know more than you do in the given area.
• And never ever stop learning.

Now I need to be going as tomorrow it would be back to school yet again for me!