Lots and lots of good thoughts on this very important and slippery
topic.

A couple of years ago in Boston, I gave a well-received presentation
called "The Evolving Role and Competencies of Records and Information
Managers". SRO in Boston, with an appeal for an encore a couple hours
later. Clearly, the demand for more study into this topic is out there.

I'd like to suggest that there is more to this topic than the subject
line of this email may suggest.

In my opinion, competencies are part of the foundation. We need to
define, as best as we can, the skills and tools that an individual
should have in their professional tool bag. And that is a very big bag
of stuff. The other part of the foundation is a real definition of what
constitutes the "body of knowledge" for our profession. In many
respects, we have never done much formalizing or gathering of that body
of knowledge. It's out there. The ICRM has an outline and a whole pile
of Q&A, ARMA has various publications and Standards. AIIM has a variety
of relevant Standards. The Listserve (yes, even the Listserve) is a
repository of some knowledge. The IMJ / RMQ is a good source. And the
list goes on and on. The challenge is reining in what constitutes the
core BoK for our profession -- what do you have to know to be a
passable records manager. Arguably, I would put forth that the ICRM has
continually struggled to define that space as the CRM exam process has
evolved. But to me, the CRM is hurdle one. That says you know a bit
about a reasonably broad cross-section of our profession, you can write
an intelligible sentence, and you have a defined amount of education
and experience. It doesn't say that you're going to be a great records
manager; it just says you have shown a basic level of competence. Same
for other professions, as we know. 50% of people with JDs and MDs
graduated in the bottom half of their classes -- that doesn't mean they
passed the bar exam or are practicing, however.

As I look at what we "do", I try to define some buckets of focus. First
is the core -- what every records manager needs to know. I'm not going
to try and define that here right now. Next, you have the buckets of
closely aligned knowledge -- some law, some technology, some project
management, some accounting, some pure business sense. Next are the
specialties of knowledge; first, the core specialties around our
related technologies of filing, microfilm, imaging, document
management; second, the core specialties of the industry in which we
work: law firms, energy, pharma, medicine, securities, financial
services, banking, etc. Lastly, are the niches of knowledge: perhaps
some library science, some archives management or history, museum
exhibits, foreign languages, pure management, etc. All of these areas
add much flavor to what we call our profession. Like doctors and
lawyers, we have specialists and GPs. But when you peel off the
specialty of a doctor or lawyer, you know that there is a core bit of
knowledge that makes them uniquely a doctor or lawyer.

So once we fully define our "domain" -- what we expect a professional
to know and where that knowledge resides, I would suggest that the CRM
becomes a more valuable benchmark than it already is today. I would
hope that ARMA's contribution to competencies would lead to a more
global discussion of competencies and perhaps result in a unified
competency document. Coupled with that, I would hope there could be
agreement upon what constitutes the core BoK.

Building upon that, I would then hope to see some real research, some
real benchmarks, and an enhancement to the BoK of real academic study
and research. Historically, ARMA's Records Management Quarterly tried
to act like a scholarly journal, but it never quite achieved that level
-- at the same time, articles in RMQ (and subsequently IMJ) are not all
hacked out press releases from vendors. But, as others have noted, they
aren't quite scholarly journal quality either.

Somewhere in this process, we have to get the outside world to start to
demand better training and education for our profession. That can only
happen with a defined set of competencies and a solid BoK.

In the meantime, I would argue that the days of "bootstrapped" records
managers are coming to a close. OJT without additional formal education
can only get you so far. You're going to need academic credentials. And
that is not at all to denigrate those records managers who have
achieved much without ever writing a term paper. But the business world
demands education as an entry point to higher level positions. Yes,
another hurdle.

I've suggested publicly that RMs who confine their lives to tasks and
processes that are commodities had better hope for an early retirement
buyout package that they qualify for. If you're out there throwing
files and boxes around (or solely managing people who do), you're
managing a commodity -- a task that can be outsourced to someone who
can perform the task less expensively and without substantial
experience and training.

In my opinion and experience, the value that we bring to our
organizations is the ability to cross organizational boundaries and
identify and protect the records of the organization. Furthermore,
we're able to communicate equally with technologists and attorneys.
We're able to understand broad business changes and how those changes
affect the records of the organization. We're able to bring order to
disorder.

But to do all that we first must understand the core of our profession,
then understand the connections with technology and law, then
understand where the organization faces risks. And all of this is done
within the boundaries of the particular industry in which we work --
understanding the drivers of risk and reward for the organization. And
lastly, we need to be able to ensure that records can be found and
delivered when needed -- not actually find them and deliver them.

When I gave my presentation in Boston, the hardest question I was asked
afterwards came from an attorney. She had been placed in charge of a
records management department. She had come to the Conference hoping to
educate herself on what she needed to know. She asked me if I could
give her a list of the core principles that she needed to be able to
articulate and understand that would make her a proper records manager.
Very often, we define ourselves from the bottom up -- all the minutiae
of the "doing" and what we have to do to "improve ourselves". We fail
to consider those people who have more broadly-based core competencies
of their own (as well as their own specialties) who need to know the
most critical bits of information about our profession to be competent.
Now that could ignite a firestorm from some folks -- how dare someone
try to learn what has taken many of us 20 years of hard work to learn!
But at the end of the day, don't you want to be that attorney? She has
proven herself competent in another field and has been asked to immerse
herself in another world of knowledge where her past experience can
provide significant value. Think about the path of CFOs who become
CEOs...

Does that attorney need to understand the nuances of terminal digit
filing? Nope. That's a comodity. She can rent that expertise. Does she
need to know how to research and determine a retention period? I'd
think not. She's a lawyer -- she can interpret a law book -- and rent
that expertise as well. But she does need to understand the lifecycle
of records and the risk points that touch that lifecycle. She's also
going to want standards to use to measure the performance of her
operations people and her vendors. She's going to want to get greater
knowledge of the special aspects of record-keeping in her industry and
how those things affect the business overall. She's going to want to
understand one of the things that many of us do intuitively -- connect
the dots of the organization; use the records to tie things together,
eliminate duplication, and reduce cost overall. What she can walk away
with is a very broad understanding of how her company works, simply by
following the records.

As I said in Chicago this past fall, you don't want to be a yard wide
and a mile deep. People tend to see the width and not the depth.

Patrick Cunningham, CRM

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