Push vs. Pull models in records

One of the things that I think is a helpful thinking tool for records services, is whether you're operating a push or a pull model, and also to consider whether you should be operating a push or a pull model.

A push model means that you have to push your services on to people to get them to use them.

A pull model means that people are coming to you for a service that you offer because they want it.

It's a useful tool to think about any service, but particularly for records services.

By one conceptualisation, compliance-oriented records services are always going to be a push model.

But that's a real problem, because the real thing that starts with any push model, is a vicious cycle.

If you have to push your service on people, they're likely to resent it.

How do you respond when people you resent keep inserting themselves in your life?

Pretty simple - you avoid them as much as possible.

If you have a big enough stick, this doesn't matter.

When people avoid you - you can go and hit them with it, pretty soon the challenge of avoiding you becomes larger than the challenge of doing what you want.

If you've got AUSTRAC as a regulator - you probably have this power, because they've been out there and made all the banks eyes water with gigantic fines.

If you've got an archive for a regulator though, your stick doesn't scare anyone.

So what to do?

For me, this is where pull models come in.

Records didn't start out as something that people kept because they needed to comply.

Records started out as something that people kept because their lives and businesses became unmanageable without them.

Somehow that's been left behind in favour of a model in which records is all about "compliance" - and not about performance.

The key to a pull model, is making it about performance again.

If people know that their performance appraisal is going to go better every year, because they can come to records and get help making their process run better, what do you think is going to happen?

They're going to come to you A LOT.

So much that it's going to cause you real problems.

A friend and I were discussing this some time ago, and he said that he knew he'd arrived at the right service model for records when they had to implement a ticketing system and hire an additional staff member because the process mapping service they started to offer had a queue that was 9 months in length.

Obviously there's a catch here.

If you offer your records staff to another team to do their work, you're going to get a pull system in place.

But all it's going to do is deprive you of resources, and convince your organisation that you can operate with less resources.

The kind of pull model you want, is the one in which you're offering services that increase the ability of other parts of the organisation to organise and manage their work - that improve performance.

This means that there has to be a business case that makes the service worth operating - and that it has to have a set of economics that work within the constraints of your organisation.

What I mean by this, is that if you can help people improve their business processes, but there's a $60k bill every time you do it, you're starting with a barrier that's going to slow down execution to the point where you might be able to create pull - in 5 - 7 years.

Sure - that's great, but if you can start a pull system in place in 5 to 7 weeks with no licensing cost, you're going to be a lot better off.

Ultimately, each model can succeed under the right conditions.

What I'm seeing though, is a lot of people trying a push model in an organisation where the stick just isn't big enough.

And instead of rethinking the model, they keep trying the same push model with the same economics and same lack of enforcement year after year after year.

In some ways, I understand this.

Pull models are scary.

A push model is defined for you.

Your regulator says "do this."

And all you have to do is manage it.

Whether it succeeds is largely irrelevent - you've done what you were told.

Pull models require leadership.

They require people to go to their organisations and figure out what service they want so they can give it to them - and sometimes it doesn't work.

But if you've been trying the push model for 20 years like many have, and it's been mostly failing all the time,

Why not try a pull model?