Poor results are records fault - and what we can focus on to fix that.

The first step to changing anything is taking responsibility for it.

In the last post, I wrote that I think that there's a 50% performance improvement to be had in our organisations through improving record quality.

That's a huge opportunity for records to regain our standing, and to really become a valued part of every organisation.

The challenge is that what we take responsibility for and focus on, determines how we see the world and the problems we have to solve.

If we take responsibility for record quality as an abstract concept, we'll probably deliver records that are compliant with local and international standards and other abstract measures that are unrelated to the results that our organisations need to achieve.

If the quality standards that we were working to were unrelated to the performance of our organisation, we'd probably see a pattern emerge in which we weren't given the opportunity to build records systems, when we did build them, they weren't used, and in which we struggled to get funding for staff, systems - and all the basic things we were trying to do.

If we took responsibility for record quality but only as it relates to organisational performance, we would probably spend lots of time with people working out how recorded information contributed to or detracted from their performance.

And then making changes to recording practice that improved their performance.

You might have guessed by now what my point is.

This is something that we can take responsibility for.

If you want evidence of how this can work, have a look at every business process management system in your organisation.

Every one of those systems represents a time when someone outside of records took responsibility for the quality of the records that people were using, and making sure that the right quality of record was provided to the right person at the right time.

And they took it away from us - because that was the responsibility the organisation wanted someone to take, and we wouldn't, so someone else stepped into the vacuum.

If you're like me, you'll probably look at those systems and think that mostly, they're crap - and I think you'd be right.

When an organisation can't get people from inside the organisation with records skills to take responsibility for their records systems, they go outside it (business process management systems contain recorded information, they're a records system).

Who do they go outside to?

Consultants.

Consultants who don't know the organisation.

Don't know the people.

Don't know the culture.

What do consultants take responsibility for?

Delivering based on the project scope - which was put together quickly based on limited information by people who don't know the people and culture, and aren't willing to take responsibility for the performance of the organisation - and probably wanted change management, but couldn't get it funded.

So of course the system is crap.

And doesn't produce the performance it could - because it wasn't created by someone who was taking responsibility for organisational performance.

Here's the thing though, the people using it think it's better than something designed to a set of abstract standards about record quality, because at least (for a while) the consultants focused on the results that they wanted to win the job.

The point of all this, is that while poor results are not necessarily records fault, results are something that we can take responsibility for.

They're also something that organisations are dying to have an internal group take responsibility for.

And it should be us.

Because we are the records specialists.

All these systems do, is record information at a pre-specified level of quality, and then move it around to people who need it.

The only standard that matters to the people who use them, is “did this improve my performance?”

If we want to recover records standing in organisations, all we have to do is take responsibility for the results of the organisation, and the part that recorded information plays in it.

Which means that we have to start from the point of view, that the unrealised gain is our fault.

And take responsibility for fixing it.