Problems we can actually solve in Records Management, and what an opportunity to solve them looks like.
I think there are only three problems that we can actually solve - everything else is a subset.
The three problems are -
We don't know where our recorded information is (AKA - we can't find it/find it fast/cheaply enough).
We deleted recorded information too early.
We didn't delete recorded information when we should/could have.
These are really valuable problems to solve for an organisation.
When we move our focus away from them, we end up focusing on one of two things - value we can't deliver, or value that someone else delivers more effectively than we do.
If it's value we can't deliver, we're making promises we can't keep - so we lose credibility with our organisation.
If it's value that another profession delivers more effectively than we do, we need to be extremely careful because if we aren't absolutely clear that we're not the best solution, we're just setting ourselves up to be seen as expensive and inefficient in the future. Accountability is a good example of this, we can't deliver it, we like to pretend, but we hang off audit reports because auditors can actually deliver some form of accountability, as can courts. We can support both of those processes, but we can't deliver accountability.
We also need to be really careful of the difference between a problem being present, and an opportunity to solve the problem. DAMA and the DMBOK do a nice job of articulating the critical difference through their definition of 'control.' In DAMA lingo, a control is "the mechanism used to maintain acceptable performance of a process."
The important bit is "acceptable performance of a process."
The cold hard truth, is that most of the time, we don't get to implement records management practices in our organisations because accountable people think that the current level is acceptable, or that adding records management will be an overhead that will reduce the current level of performance.
The difference between just having a problem, and having an opportunity to implement records management practices to solve the problem, is the presence of an organisational stakeholder who is accountable for the performance of the process in question, who thinks that performance is currently not acceptable - either as a general statement, or in comparison to what they think could be achieved, and who can spend money to change that performance. Without those things, we don't have an opportunity for records management - we're going to make one of two mistakes - we're going to ask someone to spend money on something they don't care about, or we're going to ask someone to spend money who isn't able to spend it.
If we're in the presence of these things, all we need is a convincing 'how' that someone can believe, buy into, and fund.