Governance is Always Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

There’s a disturbing trend in the information governance profession that needs to stop now, namely the tendency to apologize for the work we’re doing.

“Let me email that document to you.”
– “I’m sorry, but please paste in the link to the digital document instead.”

“I need to make a copy of this for my files.”
– “I’m sorry, but please use the image in the electronic file store as your convenience copy.”

“I’m taking this record from the folder for a while.”
– “I’m sorry, but please check it out from the records repository so we know who’s using it.”

What are we apologizing for? The need to alter people’s thinking and habits so our information can be treated as the asset that it is? Bah. Just stop it. Stop it now. (more…)

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Keep Calm and Carry On

Stuck in the Middle (of Information Management) With You

If you’re reading this, you already know how valuable it can be to better manage your organization’s business-critical information, and improve the business processes that make that information available to those who need it, when they need it. (Information governance to the rescue!)

If you’ve tried doing this, then you probably also know how hard it can be to convince your higher-ups that it’s worth the time and effort to achieve these outcomes – and you may have experienced resistance from the ranks as well, where the attitude tends to be: “What do you know about how I do my job?!”

The question then is, “how do I soften this rock and hard place so I don’t get squeezed in the process?” (more…)

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Who Cares?

Spent an amazing two hours yesterday as a panelist on The Knowledge Group’s webcast The Continuously Evolving Landscape of Information Governance: Balancing Risks and Opportunities, and one question kept running through my mind:

“Who Cares?”

Not in terms of “Bah, this is a waste of time,” but rather “Who in an organization cares about infogov, who SHOULD care, and how can we best reach and recruit them?”

And then a corollary question reared its ugly head:

“Shouldn’t EVERYONE care?”

And I concluded: maybe not. At least, not in a uniform way. (more…)

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Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

It may sound like a question for a beauty pageant contestant, but it’s an important one for anyone with information governance aspirations:

What does Change Management mean to you?

Ask an IT director or a project manager or a technologist, and they’ll probably say something like “it’s how we control the requesting, approval, and implementation of system modifications.”

Ask a businessperson or an HR director or a behaviorist (or me!), and you’ll likely hear something to the effect of “it’s the people side of organizational operations.”

Different responses, yet both are correct, each in its own context. (more…)

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