The value producing elements of a records system
Are always the routines around the system.
No routines, no value.
I think it's important to distinguish between routines (that we might also call habits) and processes or procedures for the simple reason that organisations have processes and procedures, people have routines - and the routines win.
Routine examples -
- We keep our stuff here so that we know where it is.
- When we look for things, we look here first because that's the most likely place we'll find it.
- We organise and manage our work here - track status, report during meetings, go to here to find out what to do next.
- I ask "Joanne" when I don't know what to do next because she generally knows.
Where lots of us go wrong, is that we implement a system and a policy, and we deliver training and think that's it.
But without new routines, the old routines continue.
There are two ideas that are worth considering here.
The first is prospect theory.
Prospect theory says (in a simplistic summarisation) that the payoff from something new has to be about 1.65x the payoff from the existing way of doing something before we'll consider it.
The second is straight out of the psychology of learning.
The basic underlying theory of "operant conditioning" goes that we learn by getting a positive or negative payoff from an activity. Over time, continued positive payoffs embed the activity that produces them as our habitual way of doing things - and this happens right down to the neural level with our brain literally building neural pathways that recognise the situation and implement the behaviour, making it the easiest for us to do. Why this is important, is that the payoff of a new thing, has to be substantial, and has to continue for a long time to extinguish the old behavior.
So often, we implement a new system, and the old routines continue - so nothing actually changes. Our executive just get more annoyed with us because now they're footing the bill for another system that isn't getting much use.
If our routines don't change, nothing actually changes.
How are you working on the new routines?