Greetings, Suzanne.
In an earlier (recent) life as a director and manager of records in
both Hong Kong and Canada, I also enjoyed the dubious pleasure of one
department "solving" a problem without any particular grasp pf the
new problems caused. Peter Senge is interesting read and worth
recommending to your colleagues who might benefit from a little
systems thinking!
Interdepartmental dialogue is always, of course, the stuff of
politics. These comments are offered with knowledge that your own
closer view is the critical one. For myself, I have had some success
in navigating diplomatically among three elements: resourcing,
accountability, and helpfulness--the order varying with circumstance.
In relation to resourcing: couched in whatever language and approach
that fits local culture and the circumstance, clarify that the
resource demands on finding and retrieving information in case of
business need and litigation need to be considered and that while
entirely reasonable to expect programs to carry this out when control
of the records remains under program control, the new practice limits
that control rapidly and effectively passes the responsibility to IT.
Explore the resource contingency that IT has budgeted and the process
through which programs or your program can draw on these resources
when needed. (Likely, no such resources exist, and you can practice
the art of conscious bewilderment - or vocal outrage - as suits ;-)
In relation to accountability, consider conveying that it is entirely
appropriate that program managers are accountable for the management
of processes and information under their jurisdiction, but that when
that ability to manage is removed and control passes to IT, then it
is eminently reasonable that IT accept accountability for the content
they now control. (I have yet to see an IT shop that is eager to
take on accountability for record content--but it is hard to argue
that a manager who is not allowed to manage content due to an IT
solution should be held accountable for unpleasant surprises, lack of
compliance, etc. that may arise through lack of that control).
Depending on progress, you might indicate interest in IT' index to
the records and any cluster-created taxonomy as this would help your
RIM program help the organization in general. This may provide
opportunity to explore why one might want a taxonomy in the face of
full text search capacity.
Helpfulness works two ways..your RIM program may help IT with this
accountability question through some joint endeavour to apply
structure (i.e. meta data, taxonomy, etc. that would enable a more
granular management of data, and IT might help your program and solve
the problem they have created for your mutual leadership by taking
another look at email as a record and collaborating on a corporate
solution that takes into account the asset/liability side of
information content. Depending on the organization and a range of
factors, IT may be quite happy to recognize its role facilitating
program managers' accountability once a different perspective on the
problem and effect of the solution can be seen. My stance has
generally been to adopt a helpful attitude in mutually approaching a
corporate challenge--while being firm about this issue of who is
actually managing what. Ultimately, you may be able to turn a concern
into a dialogue that teaches and transforms the relationship between
your mandates--over time. Good luck!
Hope this makes some sense after a long flight--need a coffee!
Regards,
John
John James O'Brien, BA, CRM, MALT
[log in to unmask]
Partner & Managing Director, IRM Strategies
Hong Kong: +852 3101 7359 Bangkok: +66 2 207 2530
irmstrategies.com
Associate Partner, S4K Research, Stockholm
s4k.com
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