Writing your records manifesto

According to wikipedia (the source of all the worlds wisdom), a manifesto is "a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer."

They have a rich history - from the ten commandments to the communist manifesto and JFK's man on the moon speech.

If you haven't seen it before, it's worth going and looking at the Agile manifesto (capital A) - it's what gave us Agile as we know it today. The Agile movement completely transformed software development from waterfall focused monolithic, design everything up front processes that routinely failed to deliver, to processes in which value was generated and delivered quickly so that people could assess whether they were really delivering what was needed - before the entire project budget was spent, rather than after it.

I think that writing a manifesto is a worthy exercise for anyone planning on being in the profession for more than 5 - 10 years, for the simple reason that it forces us to think about where we are, and where we think we should be, and to articulate it coherently.

When we're really clear on that, a whole set of other things become clear.

The skills we need to succeed.

The value we provide to our organisations - or the value we should provide.

And if we publish them, then other people can do it with us - because they know what we think.

I suggested to a group I'm part of recently that we should write one, and I wrote the first draft myself.

While there wasn't much enthusiasm for it (sometimes you're not a leader, sometimes you're a weirdo wandering around on your own), I enjoyed and found value in the exercise. It forced me to articulate coherently the direction I think we should go in.

I've pasted it in below - maybe you'll find something in it that you like.

Whether you do or not, please consider writing your own - even if it’s only so that you know what you think (and feel free to take and use anything I've written, change it, do whatever you like with it - make it better).

A new records management manifesto (Karl’s version).

Records and information management is a professional management discipline.

Organisations hire us to improve performance.

We are committed to using our skills to improve organisational performance. We deliver by making sure that people get the right information, at the right time and place, and the right level of quality to effectively and efficiently carry out their work.

This means that we implement only practices that improve performance in our own organisational context.

We recognise that what works in one organisation may not work in another, that best practice is only a guide, and we are committed to prioritising effective achievement of performance improvement over other measures of practice implementation.

We further recognise that records and information management exists in a competitive landscape in which there are many ways to achieve results, and in which our practices have to compete for funding with those of other disciplines that achieve the same purpose. This means that our practices need to achieve an acceptable level of effectiveness and efficiency both in our organisations, and in competition with other practices in order for us to grow and thrive.

Because we are professionals, we measure performance rigorously so that we can be certain our practice has produced the improvement than it should. When it does not, we are fearless in admitting it and committed to understanding why it failed so we can change practice, achieve the performance improvement we aimed for and share what we’ve learned with our colleagues and the community.

The complex nature of recorded information means that the only way we can be effective at safeguarding the integrity, accountability and transparency of our organisations in the long term, is to implement practices that are matched to the maturity of our organisations so that we can be effective today.

We recognise that the records and information management exists in a time of immense technological change, and a market of alternate ways to achieve improved performance. This means that the nature of our work must change as the problems that the market needs us to solve change. To achieve this, we are committed to ongoing professional and interdisciplinary education and experimentation. The work is changing but our core value of the right information is only going up.

To this end, we recognise that we have imposed artificial boundaries on ourselves that have prevented us embracing new technology, and we commit ourselves to being effective managers of any methods used by our organisations to record information or inform business process using any media or medium.

Technology is the cornerstone of our profession and has been for thousands of years. Information technology is no different and we know that to be effective, we must be fluent in all the technologies that our organisations use to record information and inform themselves so that we can understand how practice needs to meet the technology.

We further recognise that when a records or information manager fails, it is a failure of our profession and that means that each and every one of must be invested in all of our success. The only way we can truly succeed is if we all succeed together.

We commit to regularly meeting with other professionals so we can share practice, deal with difficult problems as a group, and reach new levels of success and effectiveness together. We know that only by working together can we take our profession to new heights.

We are committed to improving performance and we deliver on it by making sure that the right people get the right information, at the right time and place, and the right level of quality to effectively and efficiently carry out their work.