Oct 2, 2022·edited Oct 2, 2022Liked by Karl Melrose
RM today is much more about soft or professional or interpersonal or whatever you choose to call them skills: project management, change management, communication, etc. As you note in 2., if as a records manager you can show me that RM directly contributes to making my job easier and more efficient, I'll listen. If you can't, no amount of "convincing" is going to work over time, as eventually those in the convincing position move on to something more meaningful. Lasting RM improvements have to be tied to business improvements, both day-to-day and longer term.
It seems to me, in my experience, that RM falls into two categories. 1. in "hard" RM like accounting, contracting, HR, etc where the RM process has been inculcated into the mindset and is not questioned and 2. in "soft" areas like sales, marketing, administration where RM is not "inculcated" into the mindset and probably never will be. RM in #2 is sketchy at best. I think your points above apply to the #2 group in a company.
Thanks Bud - ncie to hear from you! I like the division you have suggested. I've been thinking about it for a while today, and some of the other things I've been trying to work out and I'm going to articulate it slightly differently - let me know what you think. What I've been trying to work out is how we help people understand the difference between a high quality information environment, and a low quality one - becuase I think that's central to the gains we can make with RM.
To start, I have to propose the straw man there are really two core benefits from records management and they are avoidance of poor performance, and improved performance.
Avoidance of poor performance comes from the professions which have routine practices that lead to good outcomes, and have learned that there is routinely and predictably a loss of performance when recordkeeping is poor. Fundamentally, these professions have worked out that without good records, they're disorganised and high quality output and consistent performance is unlikely. They've worked it out at the level of the profession, so there's a body of practice that makes it clear that "this is how to succeed" - and deviation from it results in well known failures (compliance, risk etc.).
Improved chance of upside comes from professions which can gain significantly from being better organised - which to me is fundamentally about recording information so that we can act beyond the capacity of our memory. I think these professions are those which do not yet have an accepted body of practice that links records to performance in ways that mean people don't think about doing them any other way. Sales is a great example of this - good records in sales are huge performance improvers, but most people don't keep them, and most sales people don't want to work that way. So organisations don't gain - but that's OK because the body of accepted practice isn't really there yet.
Did that make sense? I think it's your idea - but I think I've articulted the hard RM professions as those in which poor records reduce performance from a known level, and soft as those in which performance can be improved to an unknown level, or something like that - work in progress.
RM today is much more about soft or professional or interpersonal or whatever you choose to call them skills: project management, change management, communication, etc. As you note in 2., if as a records manager you can show me that RM directly contributes to making my job easier and more efficient, I'll listen. If you can't, no amount of "convincing" is going to work over time, as eventually those in the convincing position move on to something more meaningful. Lasting RM improvements have to be tied to business improvements, both day-to-day and longer term.
Amen Jesse!
It seems to me, in my experience, that RM falls into two categories. 1. in "hard" RM like accounting, contracting, HR, etc where the RM process has been inculcated into the mindset and is not questioned and 2. in "soft" areas like sales, marketing, administration where RM is not "inculcated" into the mindset and probably never will be. RM in #2 is sketchy at best. I think your points above apply to the #2 group in a company.
Thanks Bud - ncie to hear from you! I like the division you have suggested. I've been thinking about it for a while today, and some of the other things I've been trying to work out and I'm going to articulate it slightly differently - let me know what you think. What I've been trying to work out is how we help people understand the difference between a high quality information environment, and a low quality one - becuase I think that's central to the gains we can make with RM.
To start, I have to propose the straw man there are really two core benefits from records management and they are avoidance of poor performance, and improved performance.
Avoidance of poor performance comes from the professions which have routine practices that lead to good outcomes, and have learned that there is routinely and predictably a loss of performance when recordkeeping is poor. Fundamentally, these professions have worked out that without good records, they're disorganised and high quality output and consistent performance is unlikely. They've worked it out at the level of the profession, so there's a body of practice that makes it clear that "this is how to succeed" - and deviation from it results in well known failures (compliance, risk etc.).
Improved chance of upside comes from professions which can gain significantly from being better organised - which to me is fundamentally about recording information so that we can act beyond the capacity of our memory. I think these professions are those which do not yet have an accepted body of practice that links records to performance in ways that mean people don't think about doing them any other way. Sales is a great example of this - good records in sales are huge performance improvers, but most people don't keep them, and most sales people don't want to work that way. So organisations don't gain - but that's OK because the body of accepted practice isn't really there yet.
Did that make sense? I think it's your idea - but I think I've articulted the hard RM professions as those in which poor records reduce performance from a known level, and soft as those in which performance can be improved to an unknown level, or something like that - work in progress.