Records, collusion, deception and what the right records strategy recognises.

*Just a quick note that the regulatory commentary here is on the regulations that typically apply to government agencies and are imposed by archival institutions.

By one view of strategy, there are only really three forms of strategic activity - deception, coalition formation and the instrumental use of violence.

Most people reading this will (I'm sure) scoff at the idea that those things exist in their organsiation.

But consider records management policy in most organisations.

Getting a policy written and agreed to at a point high in the organisation is coalition building - a coalition being a temporary alliance for combined action. In this case, a temporary coalition with the executive so that we can use their power.

Then to violence.

What is compliance enforcement if it's not the most severe form of violence permitted in an organisation?

Then there is deception.

How is it that the chief executives of so many organisations cheerfully sign the regulatory compliance statement every year when we all know that 90%+ of the regulatory records in most organisations never get near an approved records system in most organisations?

Simple - by signing our policies, and allocating us a budget.

By doing this, they get to engage in the deception that they have done their job.

This is because the job of really senior executives is to allocate capital in ways that help the organisation deliver on the things that whoever funds the organisation is going to approve of (funders could obviously be customers, shareholders, the general public in the case of government).

Their job is to allocate the capital.

Our job is to use it.

They are engaging in strategic behavior - if the compliance standard was really important, they'd be much more focused on it, this deception allows them to both say that they've done something about it, and also to focus on the things that they find most important.

I feel like I'm being unduly harsh on senior executives here, as I've written this, I've been forced to consider who it is that is actually engaging in the deception.

Any ongoing deception like this involves collusion.

There would be few in our industry who would believe that they have a 100% compliance rate - or one that is close enough to 100% that we would be comfortable with it appearing in an official report.

Yet how many of us have made an honest survey of our compliance rate, and written to our chief executive to say that they cannot sign the compliance statement while the organisation is in such an unacceptable state of compliance?

Frank and fearless?

It's easy to understand why we don't.

There are two strategies here that we are engaging in - although they are likely unconscious ones.

The first is to be effective in our role - as effective as we can be, because we are a passionate group, and believe in what we do.

The second is to stay employed - and to make sure that we continue to be employable.

This puts us in a bind.

We all know that the budget for 100% compliance would be much larger than the one that any of us get.

We also know that our chief executive is perfectly happy to sign the compliance statement with the current (possibly completely crappy) state of compliance.

What does this make the right strategy?

Personally, I think that the only strategy is the one that recognises the deception, and the fact that it is a fractal representation of another deception - the deception that many of our regulators engage in when they write regulation that they have no intention of turning up to enforce.

The way our executives treat our policy, is a repeat of how the archives treat the executives.

The archival institutions know that compliance rates are low.

They know that their regulation does not get implemented completely and successfully.

Yet they don't change their regulation, or engage in enforcement activity.

And one more step removed, we have ministers who head government agencies, who wrote the legislation that the archive uses and have a process they can use to change it - who also surely know that it is not effective.

But they don't change it.

So we have many layers of collusion before the regulatory burden is imposed on us as the implementers who try and faithfully implement the regulation - and find ourselves unable to, because the two groups who should be delivering the power and authority we need are playing a strategic game so that they can focus on the things they really care about.

And just to be clear - I think this collusion and game playing is unconscious, not malicious.

The internal logic for archives, ministers and chief executives is probably something like "we've given them the legislation/regulation, it's their job to implement and enforce it" and "they don't give us the support we need to enforce it, so we can't - and that's their fault," and "I have 300 priorities and this is 299th." All of which is to say that it's the internal logic of groups of people grappling with large, complex problems and having a hard time keeping all the plates in the air - it's not malicious.

So what strategy to deal with this?

Whatever strategy we choose, I think the right one has to recognise that this collusion takes place - even if it takes place at an unconscious level.

If we can be conscious that the collusion is taking place, we can be one up on the people who are colluding unconsciously.

By doing this, we can recognise that we may be imposing constraints on ourselves and on the strategy that we develop, that no one else is imposing.

This gives us a huge amount of strategic freedom.

If the coalitions that we have to build don't have to be built around compliance objectives that no one is enforcing, we can build them around measures of performance that each coalition partner finds meaningful.

This means that the conversation with business units can go beyond "put all your stuff in the records system or else we'll ask you to put it in there again," and move on to "what is the most important information for your performance and risk management, and how do we make sure it's where it needs to be when you need it."

This is important, because the main thing that's clear to almost everyone in records in government is that the right strategy isn't one built around compliance with archival regulation - or it would be working more often.

The archives show by their actions that effectiveness isn't important enough for them to enforce their regulation.

Executives show by their actions that effectiveness isn't important enough to give us the power and resources we need.

Ministers show by their actions that effectiveness isn't important enough to write legislation that can be effective.

But they all play the performative game of talking about what they do as though it’s meant to be effective.

The people who suffer from these games are the people who have to do the implementation.

The right strategy is the one making choices that recognise the limits on our ability to get things done, and recognises the sources of support that are actually available to us.

The core limit is that we don’t have the authority to compel people to do what the legislation and regulation says.

We have to borrow it - and it’s almost never given, that coalition just doesn’t work.

That’s not our fault.

The only thing we can control is what we do about that - and we only have two real choices - the first being to pretend that we have the authority, the second being to recognise it, and act accordingly.

Acting accordingly means (to me) recognising the sources of support that are available to us, and the actions we need to take in order to engage in building those coalitions.

Archives aren’t available to us as a source of support - not really. They won’t enforce, and without enforcement, there’s nothing to drive our executives to give their support.

What is available to us all, are business units in our own organisation that have things they need to get done, and for whom having the right information in the right place at the right time is always a problem.

Strategies that rely on people who won’t turn up, and ignore the needs of the people who are right in front of us and need our help are nothing but folly.

Pretending that they will work is the worst kind of strategic activity.

It is a form of deception.

Self-deception.

And it gets us about as far as self-deception normally gets people.