We’re into a new year, and while there is always an opportunity to re-commit ourselves to improving our practice, the new year seems to be a particularly good time to commit to something new.
I am relying on “non-discriminative” approach, taking the ideas from any suitable source that comes my way.
Books? Most of current new books are describing outdated practices and paradigms, and usually they are as far from current business needs as one can get. Many of them are subservient to prevailing political agendas and trends. However, returning to classics is sometimes surprisingly beneficial.
Papers? Well, occasionally – however, the majority of really useful papers is written by other professionals.
Blogs? At present, good blogs and other social media are IMHO the best sources of the ideas, delivering them to the audience quickly, concisely and without quasi-scientific gibberish or political agendas. The only problem is that the number of such sources is very small (one or two per a big country), and steadily decreases.
I would add several more categories:
Standards: They are not as authoritative as they used to be, and their average quality is on decline – however, they are still providing useful insights. To leverage their full potential, one has to 1) monitor the standards on the topics that are outside “records management box”, and 2) monitor the standards issued by several international and national standardization bodies;
Legislation and court cases: High-volume and constantly actualized source that allows to understand current real-life problems and trends. They also provide strong arguments underpinning your thinking;
Personal communications (including the collaboration in international projects): Extremely useful for getting hard-to-find, cutting-edge knowledge and information (especially specific knowledge of national origin). I gain a lot of insights and motivation when answering questions about real-life problems asked by my colleagues.
Conferences: At present, behind-the-scene communications are of most value. The number of participants and the quality of presentations at most conferences somehow declined over the decade.
Audio- and video-recordings made by noteworthy people: Good, but still underused (in part due to the inability of the majority of the colleagues 1) to leverage modern technologies like auto-translation, and 2) to find time for recordings longer than 10 min).
AI chatbots: From time to time, they could provide surprising insightful or thought-provoking answers to well-posed questions, so this source should not be underestimated.
I follow a small number of people & organisations on Linked In - that keeps me up to date for local IM.
I read papers from everywhere particularly industry papers from tech companies - they are often pushing a product but they are usually evidence based solutions to real problems
Don't read books about IM.
I do listen to webinars from our suppliers, participate in industry network events whenever I can.
Dear Karl,
I am relying on “non-discriminative” approach, taking the ideas from any suitable source that comes my way.
Books? Most of current new books are describing outdated practices and paradigms, and usually they are as far from current business needs as one can get. Many of them are subservient to prevailing political agendas and trends. However, returning to classics is sometimes surprisingly beneficial.
Papers? Well, occasionally – however, the majority of really useful papers is written by other professionals.
Blogs? At present, good blogs and other social media are IMHO the best sources of the ideas, delivering them to the audience quickly, concisely and without quasi-scientific gibberish or political agendas. The only problem is that the number of such sources is very small (one or two per a big country), and steadily decreases.
I would add several more categories:
Standards: They are not as authoritative as they used to be, and their average quality is on decline – however, they are still providing useful insights. To leverage their full potential, one has to 1) monitor the standards on the topics that are outside “records management box”, and 2) monitor the standards issued by several international and national standardization bodies;
Legislation and court cases: High-volume and constantly actualized source that allows to understand current real-life problems and trends. They also provide strong arguments underpinning your thinking;
Personal communications (including the collaboration in international projects): Extremely useful for getting hard-to-find, cutting-edge knowledge and information (especially specific knowledge of national origin). I gain a lot of insights and motivation when answering questions about real-life problems asked by my colleagues.
Conferences: At present, behind-the-scene communications are of most value. The number of participants and the quality of presentations at most conferences somehow declined over the decade.
Audio- and video-recordings made by noteworthy people: Good, but still underused (in part due to the inability of the majority of the colleagues 1) to leverage modern technologies like auto-translation, and 2) to find time for recordings longer than 10 min).
AI chatbots: From time to time, they could provide surprising insightful or thought-provoking answers to well-posed questions, so this source should not be underestimated.
With my best regards,
Natasha Khramtsovsky
Honestly Karl, there are times when reading your latest blog post is the *only* thing that stops me tearing my IM professional's hair out.
Best wishes.
I follow a small number of people & organisations on Linked In - that keeps me up to date for local IM.
I read papers from everywhere particularly industry papers from tech companies - they are often pushing a product but they are usually evidence based solutions to real problems
Don't read books about IM.
I do listen to webinars from our suppliers, participate in industry network events whenever I can.
And read your blog.