What's your 2030 plan?

This is a simple question that I think we should all be asking, all the time.

It's really three questions.

Where are we now?

Where do we want to be in 2030? (or 5 years time - whichever is further out)

How do we get there.

If records is in a bad place, it's an opportunity to take it to a good one.

If records is in a good place in your organisation, it's an opportunity to think about how to make it better.

There’s also the problem that the rest of your organisation is thinking about where they want it to be in 1 year, 2 years and 5 years.

If you're not thinking about it in those terms, you're at a fundamental disadvantage, because anything you want to do is going to be beholden to someone else who was thinking further ahead and in a more integrated manner.

Because they thought further ahead, they’ll get the executive time and the capital allocations, and the authority to take their business units where they want them to go.

Wherever records is, by having a plan and making it official, the rest of the organisation has to start considering your strategy when they create theirs. You’ll still have to compete for funding and time, but you’ll be doing it as a program of work that is (hopefully) going to take the organisation to a place it wants to be - as a strategic equal, rather than a second class operational citizen.