The hierarchy of records value

From bottom to top, this is what I think it is -

1. Regulatory Compliance

2. Find it when you need it.

3. Right information, right place, right time, right level of quality.

4. Improving the way your organisation organises and manages work.

You might also see this as a maturity curve - and it is.

The maturity aspects are slightly different though.

Most of the time when I look at maturity indexes, I can't figure out why an organisation would want to invest in them.

They go from something like "immature" at level 1, to "managed" at level 5 - and they've got a whole pile of things that the organisation has to commit to, with no over-arching idea about what the organisation will get out of it.

In this curve, there’s an obvious focus on an aspect of value that comes with the stage. There's also an obvious change from reactive to proactive between stage 2 and 3, and a huge step change in just how much scope we have to change the way people work between stages 3 and 4.

Something that I think it also worth calling out, is the relative levels of trust that are required before your organisation will let you work on these things at the whole of organisational level.

These are the titles that I think you need to have before you can really own these things for the whole of your organisation -

1. Regulatory Compliance - Records Manager.

2. Find it when you need it - Information Manager (this is still records work to me, it's just what the industry has decided to label it).

3. Right information, right place, right time, right level of quality - CIO

4. Organising and managing work - COO.

At each level, the stakes get higher.

This means that your organisation needs to trust you more.

This isn't the traditional maturity journey for records, but the more deeply I understand records and the strategic power it could and should have, the more I see this being possible - and even probable. If only we can get people to trust that we have THEIR interests at heart.