Succeeding at records management and business performance improvement by managing the most important class of record - ephemera

The problem of every model, is that if you use it for long enough, it becomes the only way you see the world, and you're not even aware that it's there.

This is one of the reasons I think that retention schedules have been so destructive for records management.

They have become how we see the world.

One of the challenges of this, is that we discount the value of ephemera.

Ephemera is the most valuable information in any business because it is all the current state of every process the organisation is running, and every outstanding action that the organisation has decided it is going to take.

Without it, there would be chaos - instantly.

If we hit delete on all of our vital records, but had our ephemera - our organisations could probably trundle on for a very long time.

We generally only need our vital records when something catastrophic has occurred.

I can feel everyone instinctively arguing that point - but seriously, what fraction of the organisation has actually read ANY of their contracts? Or their legislation?

1%?

0.1%?

0.01%?

There are going to be two ways to win at records management in the future -

1. Decide that an event makes information a record, and fire anyone who doesn't follow records policy after that.

2. Get amazing at managing the ephemera - because if you have the ephemera, you have the current state of the organisation and from it all other value flows.

Ephemera is everything -

- To-do lists

- Post-it notes.

- Workflow emails.

- Most email.

Take those things away and your organisation stops - instantly.

It loses all its organisation - because those are all of the things that the organisation uses to be an organisation.

Without them, it becomes dis-organised.

On the other hand, if we take away permanent retention records, your organisation may not notice for decades.

If we take a DIKAR view of this (Data, Information, Knowledge, Actions, Results), knowledge is all about deciding what actions we will take.

Knowledge though, needs a context to operate in - it needs information.

Without information it is utterly useless, and we can't achieve results in any kind of directed way. Most of the information that feeds Knowledge is of trivial importance - ephemeral.

Ephemera is the most important class of information - and until we start valuing it appropriately, we're going to be eclipsed by people who do.