Records management and why WIIFM is dangerous.

If you study knowledge management, sooner or later, you're going to run into the idea about single and double loop learning.

Single loop learning describes what happens when we learn the problems our way of working creates and learn to fix them afterwards.

Double loop learning describes what happens when we learn the problems our way of working creates, and fix them by changing the underlying assumptions of the system to create better outcomes.

The reason I'm talking about them first, is that single loop learning means that you continue with a broken system, and work out ways to sell it as unbroken. This is OK - often fixing a system is complicated and expensive, so work arounds help you achieve results until it makes sense to repair the underlying system.

This brings me to WIIFM.

WIIFM is single loop learning.

WIIFM - What's In It For Me - is a way of saying to someone "it's not obvious why you should do this, but here's why you should think about it."

At the start of any new service relationship, WIIFM may be necessary - Marketing is largely WIIFM focused activity.

Beyond new service relationships though, an ongoing need for WIIFM is generally telling you one of two things -

1. That WIIFM hasn't materialised for the person that you're talking to.

2. That your WIIFM isn't really true.

Where this is interesting for records management, is that we are not in any way a new service.

We may need to explain WIIFM to brand new public servants who have never been in an organisation with formal record keeping requirements before - first, they don't know what they're supposed to do, second, they may not yet have been around long enough to see a benefit from records.

If we're trying to explain WIIFM to people who have been in the public service for 20+ years however, we really have to consider that our WIIFM probably isn't strictly true.

This is where double loop learning is important.

In most records management practices, the WIIFM can be almost anything, but inevitably ends the same way - put it in the EDRMS so that we can structure if to make retention management easy and manage its disposition.

Public servants with any tenure know this. They've had WIIFM described to them in 40 different ways over the last 20 years, and are inevitably waiting for the bit where you say…

"...and then you put it in the EDRMS that's structured for retention so that we can manage its disposition."

Ultimately, they know that while the WIIFM is different, it's just sales. The underlying assumption about the service hasn't changed.

The challenge is that mostly, the WIIFM we describe is being able to find something later.

Like that's a benefit that only we provide.

That benefit is generally in competition with the fileserver that the team has been using for a decade, that is structured in a way that makes sense to people in the team and that helps them organise their work.

Yes - our storage might be higher quality, we might have version management that makes it look like there's only one document, our metadata might be better.

But if it's been like that for 20 years, and they've heard it all before, and they're still not buying it, it's telling us that the single loop of learning isn't cutting it.

The assumptions underlying our service have to change.

If every WIIFM conversation you have ends with you saying "and then you need to put it in the EDRMS..." and you can't get people to do it after many years of trying - maybe it's time for the double loop.

People are crying out for help organising their work.

Managers are crying out for help to understand the status of work in the team that they manage.

Both of these things are (mostly) problems of how to organise information.

That's what we do.