Exactly! I find those who aren't looking forward, especially the records creators and receivers, are only considering their immediate needs and not future needs within the workflow or beyond. These people also tend to think in terms of a records life cycle rather than continuum.
Yes! As well as adding value, adopting this way of thinking also lets your people identify, size and mitigate any risks, which - if they crystallise unexpectedly - would be a Bad Thing that interrupts their good works. What's not to like?
YES! I keep trying to get David Moldrich on to talk about this, he chaired the committee for ISO15489 for about 30 years and has made some very interesting comments about pushing appraisal out into business units - getting them to think about managing their own risks through records practice.
The records appraisal lens is one excellent way to engage with business colleagues on the value of IM/RM.
I refreshed an appraisal report focusing on info usage value and risk as my swansong in a former role and am taking the same approach in my new role - asking questions like 'What info resources have you/your team got/do you make'? 'Why is that info valuable to you'? 'What would happen to you or your team's work if the info wasn't available'? It concentrates the interviewee's mind wonderfully.
I think there are psychological aspects around this topic. Rutgers University psychologist Neil Weinstein discovered unrealistic optimism. Basically, unrealistic optimism is thinking that good things are more likely to happen to you than to other people, whereas bad things are less likely. Weinstein would say It’s not an outright denial of risk, People don’t say, ‘It can’t happen to me." It’s more like, ‘It could happen to me, but it’s not as likely [for me] as for other people around me."
I think if you apply this to the workplace and information management practices a lot of people don't foresee that they won't be around to deal with issues and provide the knowledge that they have 'in their heads'. so they aren't accurately accounting for those unexpected issues that Paul talks about crystallising.
HI Farnz, I think there's lots in what you say. Another well known problem is that we're really bad at dealing with small probabilities. There's a point at which we just get overwhelmed by all of the things that are more likely to happen to us.
I don't think that's fixable. The only way to close the gap is to make sure that there's a high probability of bad things happening to someone personally attached to a failure to do something that has a very small probability of creating a problem in the future.
The problem is that we just can't get that to happen in records. If we could, we would have done it long ago.
My whole platform at the moment is advocacy for helping people organise themselves so that the record doesn't become a separate thing, it just becomes how they work. If they're creating records for the purpose of organising themselves, then we won't have to worry about them creating records for the purpose of having records. This isn't easy - but I think it's the valuable work of records into the future.
Exactly! I find those who aren't looking forward, especially the records creators and receivers, are only considering their immediate needs and not future needs within the workflow or beyond. These people also tend to think in terms of a records life cycle rather than continuum.
Yes! As well as adding value, adopting this way of thinking also lets your people identify, size and mitigate any risks, which - if they crystallise unexpectedly - would be a Bad Thing that interrupts their good works. What's not to like?
YES! I keep trying to get David Moldrich on to talk about this, he chaired the committee for ISO15489 for about 30 years and has made some very interesting comments about pushing appraisal out into business units - getting them to think about managing their own risks through records practice.
The records appraisal lens is one excellent way to engage with business colleagues on the value of IM/RM.
I refreshed an appraisal report focusing on info usage value and risk as my swansong in a former role and am taking the same approach in my new role - asking questions like 'What info resources have you/your team got/do you make'? 'Why is that info valuable to you'? 'What would happen to you or your team's work if the info wasn't available'? It concentrates the interviewee's mind wonderfully.
I think there are psychological aspects around this topic. Rutgers University psychologist Neil Weinstein discovered unrealistic optimism. Basically, unrealistic optimism is thinking that good things are more likely to happen to you than to other people, whereas bad things are less likely. Weinstein would say It’s not an outright denial of risk, People don’t say, ‘It can’t happen to me." It’s more like, ‘It could happen to me, but it’s not as likely [for me] as for other people around me."
I think if you apply this to the workplace and information management practices a lot of people don't foresee that they won't be around to deal with issues and provide the knowledge that they have 'in their heads'. so they aren't accurately accounting for those unexpected issues that Paul talks about crystallising.
HI Farnz, I think there's lots in what you say. Another well known problem is that we're really bad at dealing with small probabilities. There's a point at which we just get overwhelmed by all of the things that are more likely to happen to us.
I don't think that's fixable. The only way to close the gap is to make sure that there's a high probability of bad things happening to someone personally attached to a failure to do something that has a very small probability of creating a problem in the future.
The problem is that we just can't get that to happen in records. If we could, we would have done it long ago.
My whole platform at the moment is advocacy for helping people organise themselves so that the record doesn't become a separate thing, it just becomes how they work. If they're creating records for the purpose of organising themselves, then we won't have to worry about them creating records for the purpose of having records. This isn't easy - but I think it's the valuable work of records into the future.