The different approaches to records
How we think about records determines the way in which we approach our organisations with it.
If you talk to as many practitioners as I do, patterns start to emerge in the way people think.
This obviously means we need a taxonomy - just because.
Partly this is for neatness, partly it's because if we can start to see patterns, we can start to see the correlation between patterns of success and failure, and possibly find new ways to look at and think about our own delivery of records.
One of the clearest things to me is that most people have a single approach to records management, and they do it that way everywhere they go.
Their approach isn't contingent on the organisation that they're in and the circumstances that it provides.
To me, this is like dressing for the snow all year.
Many try to put a veneer of adaptability over their practice with "WIIFM" - but if your organisation won't authorise your way of delivering records this is like changing the colour of your ski gear and hoping that will it comfortable for Queensland in summer.
The point of having a taxonomy, is that if we can see types of record delivery, we can start to make comparisons and get a better sense of our own practice, and how it meets the needs and desires of our organisations.
There is only one clear thing to me in records - programs that deliver to the needs and desires of their organisations succeed, others fail.
Three quick notes -
This is a first go - and in need of much refinement (this is where you come in).
No one is exclusively one thing - these are tendencies that I observe.
I am really really interested in what you see, and how you would categorise it - so please comment so I can make this idea better.
I see four clear patterns - records as a:
Obligation
Practice
Service
Product
Obligation
This is a pure compliance mindset.
Regulation creates an obligation for people to act in a certain way.
People thinking like this follow through on that obligation - they take it and implement it.
The strength is that you get a complete implementation of the regulation.
The weakness is that it doesn't adapt. At its most extreme, what the organisation wants, desires and will authorise doesn't matter - the regulation is the regulation.
Practice
I'm on the fence about whether to call this one "practice" or "culture." What I'm trying to describe is a learned pattern of behaviour that continues to be implemented. I'm stuck on culture or practice because culture at its root is "what is cultivated," Practice is about "practicing" and developing competence in specific patterns of behaviour - which are then the easiest to continue.
The pattern that I see here, is that for many, records is learned by people on the job, so the people they learn from really determine the scope of their thinking. Often people learn from someone whose practice had idiosyncrasies based on their own learning or practice environment.
The strength is that people who learn from excellent practitioners learn excellent patterns of practice.
The weakness is that "why" the pattern is appropriate may not have been part of the learning experience - and it may get practiced anyway.
Service
According to Lou Downe*, "a service is something that helps someone do something."
People delivering records management as a service tend to have "services" - which people consume as a choice because it helps them achieve something meaningful to them. When they want something, they come and ask for it.
Services approaches represent the organisation "pulling" what it wants from a records team.
The strength is that it has to be an adaptable service - because otherwise it doesn't get consumed.
The weakness is that people don't ask for an obligation, so if the organisation has compliance objectives, teams with a service focus can struggle with the idea.
Product
People who think of records as a product tend to focus on the informational value of records as inputs to processes.
Product represents the records team defining what the organisation needs, and "pushing" it to them as an artefact.
The strengths are that the process needs for records and the quality they need tend to have been well defined - so the team is setup to deliver to it.
The weakness is that the products are optimised for specific use-cases so other use cases may not have been accommodated.
Questions for you
- Do you see these patterns of practice?
- Do you think the ideas are accurate?
- Do you think the ideas are useful?
- What patterns do you see?
*Lou Downe’s book “Good Services - How to define services that work” is excellent if you want to delve deeper into a services mindset.