The biggest question I can think of in records (or why we might have it all backwards)

We get wound up about capturing records of decisions.

But what about the records that cause decisions?

Here is the big question - if we could focus on the difference between having records that show something bad happened, or changing the records that led to it so that it didn't happen, which should we choose?

Passive recipient in maybe capturing evidence that something went wrong?

Or active participant in making sure there are better outcomes?

We tell ourselves a story in records, that just capturing and managing the records leads to good.

And there is (of course) some evidence for that.

There is also ample evidence from almost all the royal commissions, that people aren't really very good at creating records, and are often very poor at using them.

The good thing, is that the royal commissions were able to wade through all of the records (that were available) of abuse and death and bad things being done to children.

If only the people creating the records had been really proficient at making records, and really proficient at consuming them.

If only the right records had been in place to cause the right decisions to be made.

Those records might have meant the royal commissions didn't have to happen.

If only the people who were supposed to make them and consume them had a group of people whose job was to be good at making and keeping records who could teach them how to make and keep really good records.

We shouldn't in any way pretend that the records can fix the problem on their own.

But making and keeping the right records (and not making and keep crap - the wrong ones) provably makes organisations more efficient.

And so many failures just come down to resources being unavailable - often because they are wasted looking for information that should be easy to find.

And in every organisation, in every process, there are records that are catalytic.

That create a reaction.

When the right catalytic records are there, to create the right reaction, the right things CAN happen.

When they're not, because people are not natural born record makers and keepers, and they've never had anyone to teach them, things get left to change that just shouldn't be, and chance is fickle, and often unbelievably cruel to people who have no options other than the ones that they are given.

So which is it to be?