How to talk yourself out of a job
So lets set some context to this conversation.
Your organisation has decided that records management is a good idea….great! You put implement a records management system (maybe even employ someone to run it) and them bam…you got records, and a ‘system’ to manage them.
But do you actually DO with these records.
Now in a government context the roll of records management is in very large part written for you. There will be legislation that you will need to comply with along with your standard corporate record keeping standards. But in a corporate context, unless your corporation operates within a regulatory framework, there is very little to do beyond maintain your corporate tax records, and the general arse covering duties… And herein lies trap.
In this musing we observe the hapless (and somewhat emotionally attached) consultant walk into a customer to help them review and update their records classification scheme. Scarred from previous RM implementations he/she seeks to un-clutter the over engineered RM classification previously implemented. The customer is excited, a simpler way to classify their records…excellent…everything is going well and the client will likely happily pay for a you to clean up their mess and maybe even ask you to roll this out. Being thorough the consultant asks ‘so how long would you like to retain these records?’
The customer asks; ‘Retain?’
“Yes, retention. You know, how long would you like to hold onto these records. Wouldn’t you want to have the system to disposition these records?” replies the consultant with a increasingly worried look on his/her face.
“Disposition?” responds the client dumbfounded.
The consultant realises the mistake in assuming everyone speaks RM and explains “Disposition is just a way of changing the status of the records, in some cases it mean to dispose of the record.”
The customer replies “Oh no we keep everything, and if we don’t need it any more we just archive onto tape… you know just in case we need it again later on down the track.”
The consultant heart breaks just a little bit inside. Hurt he/she replies “Then why did you spend the money on putting in a records management system, when you could just as simply add metadata to the records explain what kind of records they are.”
The customer shifts back in their chair as though hit with a sudden realisation “Good point, we could just do that. We don’t even need you to do that.”
And there it is, talked out of a job…the consultant is homeless living in a gutter with a sign that reads ‘will implement VERSA for Food’
Is it the consultant’s fault, to a point perhaps. Was it the fault of the customer…well no because the customer is never wrong (yeah right). The issue here is understanding, without knowing the customer’s organisation is heading down a road towards klpetomania. In a few years that organisation will be asking the question ‘why do backups take 24–48 hours to complete’ and ‘why is my system so slow’. At which point the customer turns a new consultant and asks ‘Isn’t there just a way to highlight the documents that we can just get rid off?’.
In some ways it some just comes down to us being emotional beings who love our content too much to let go. All of us waiting for a that ‘what if’ day to eventually arrive. It takes time, but we there is a time to let go of your content. In 5–10 years time I will likely look back at this blog post and comment about how simplistic my arguments are.
But then again I could still just as easily be hanging on to all the content I can as I descend deliriously into kleptomania 🙂 ….. So long as there is pie.
Originally published at anvilation.com on October 15, 2010.
