Sustainable and unsustainable records management and how your organisations tell you which you are practicing.
Which do you practice?
There are two typical groups of practice characteristics that I see -
I leave the decision about which one of these groups is more sustainable than the other.
Generally speaking though, your organisation will tell you which one is sustainable with funding.
If your funding has been going ever upward to match the increased desire for your services - your practice is sustainable.
If your funding has been dropping or staying the same in the face of increased challenges - you can probably be comfortable that your practice is unsustainable because eventually you're just going to run out of money.
If you're in the unsustainable bucket, I'm sympathetic.
Unsustainable practice is the kinds of records management practice that is reall painful for the people who practice it.
Your organisation is probably ignoring you.
You're probably under-funded.
You're probably working long hours or are hopelessly behind and feeling the stress of that.
Probably the only thing keeping you in your job is the sheer passion that you have for records - because we are a passionate bunch.
The over-arching point of this article, is that your organisation tells you what practices are sustainable. If the practice creates a virtuous cycle where more practice leads to more desire by your organisation for your practice, that's sustainable. If a practice results in part of the organisation trying to ignore you - or just never goes anywhere, that's probably unsustainable.
The good news is that focus is easy to change, and so is practice.
You have to do it in the right way - which generally means a lot of work escalating to your own management about how the activities that other business units need to undertake for you to be successful aren't being done. But it can be done.
Bottom line, if you're sick of your organisation ignoring you, and looking to have your passion rewarded, sustainable practice is waiting for you.