Taking records from "might need" to "will need"

People "might need" the work product that they created one day.

So they "might" do what we ask them to do.

Records was never supposed to solve "might need" problems.

It had real stuff to do.

Magna Carta - keep your king in line.

Manage your payroll.

Make sure you know how much money you have - so you know how much you can spend.

There are lots of "will need" problems that records can solve.

To do lists.

Service queues.

Workflows.

The difference between a mature organisation and an immature one isn't in which bucket the records fall into after they're done.

It's in how the work is organised for the people who need to do it.

The really important records of the organisation are the current state of the work in the organisation - because those are the records that the organisation "will need."

Mostly, records focuses too far along in the process.

At the end of a process, you're always dealing with "might need" - and so people "might do."

All you need to do, to get to the "will need" records, is start earlier in the process.

Start with where the record comes into the organisation, and you're always dealing with a "will need" record.

For everyone who is struggling to get people to do the work of records, when you're dealing with "will need" records, people will do the work.