Home Community Blogs Expert Blogs

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Community Topic(s):

Keywords: records management, E20, compliance, e-discovery

By Joe Shepley, Vice President, Practice Leader

March 10, 2011 - 3:23 PM

I was fortunate to be a part of a panel discussion in Chicago last week led by AIIM skipper John Mancini. I got the chance to sit side-by-side with some top notch panelists and share my ideas and experience with a great audience of ECM practitioners.

For those of you who missed the event, you can get a flavor for the discussion by checking out AIIM’s recap of it as well as from @ljseverson’s blow-by-blow Tweets.

In my last post I tried to continue the conversation from the panel and get provocative by asserting that social media has not, and will never, significantly change the e-discovery landscape.

Judging by the comments on my post (which as of 2:27 PM CST today total exactly zero), I failed in my goal of being provocative!

This week my goal is to not only get folks thinking, but to ruffle enough feathers and get people rankled enough to drive some of you all to weigh in. So here goes…

No one does records management

During the AIIM panel, I asked everyone who does systematic disposition of electronic content across the organization according to their retention schedule to raise their hands. Can you guess how many people did? (Hint: it’s the same number as responded to my last post.)

I wasn’t surprised, because I can count on one hand the number of organizations I’ve come across that do so. Which begs the question, if all we’re doing is keeping all our electronic content forever anyway, why do we spend so much time on records management?

Most organizations will tell you they do RM mostly to make sure they don’t get rid of anything they’re legally obligated to keep—but as they’re likely just keeping it all anyway, what’s their RM department doing, exactly? And how precisely is it adding any tangible value to the organization?

What if?

Starting from this line of questioning, I let my imagination go a bit on my flight home last night and came up with some what ifs that follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion.

What if we just scrapped our RM department, since regardless of their efforts, we tend to keep everything forever anyway?
What if we accepted the fact that keeping everything forever is how organizations work and tried to find ways to make that feasible instead of trying to turn every employee into a document hygiene expert?
What if we instituted a retention cut off point that met the 80/20 rule for our corporate records (say, ten years) and then ruthlessly and without exception purged according to that timeline? Would the savings on technology, storage, and employee time outweigh the compliance costs and risks?
What if we approached litigation exposure as a cost equation rather than a risk equation? Could we reduce what we spend managing litigation by managing/purging content according to simpler, less expensive, and unwavering rules (e.g., delete everything after ten years no matter what) while at the same time being more strategic about how we settle lawsuits to help reduce the number of times we even have to do discovery?
Is all the time and effort we spend trying to improve how we manage content really just a waste of time? Are we going at it the wrong way around by trying to change behavior that clearly seems to be central to how employees work (save everything, use the system of least resistance, keep multiple duplicate copies of everything) rather than applying our time and energy to minimizing the negative consequences of that behavior?

The final word

So the gauntlet is down—looking forward to a lively discussion!

Follow this Blog Post

Report

Rate Post

You need to log in to rate blog posts. Click here to login.

Add a Comment

You need to log in to post messages. Click here to login.

Comments

Thought provoking & tempting...

Submitted by Graham Corsar March 10, 2011 - 4:46 PM

Good post - very though provoking.
There's some significant tempatations to go down that path...

1) Everybody saves everything anyway. Like it or not, most knowledge workers will retain a personal archive. It's no different than the paper world. What do we really think was in all of our Dad's filing cabinets? It's just natural to maintain personal files.
2) Deleting records goes against our natural motivations. "Somebody worked hard to create that file, that letter, those drawings." "Somebody might need them someday." Disposing - no, let's get real: Destroying records feels like destroying a work product. We work so hard to tell people that information is an asset, then ask them to destroy that asset after a while. It's counterintuitive.

Yes - there's lots of good logic to counter those temptations, but it costs a lot of time and money.

Perhaps there's a middle ground with just two categories: "Need it forever" and everything else. Then perhaps time can be spent validating the "Need it forevery" and everything else can be - as you put it - ruthelessly purged after 10 years.

In the end, I'm undecided... is it better to be right? or is it better to be consistent? Not sure...

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Keep it simple and consistent

Submitted by Joe Shepley March 11, 2011 - 12:39 PM

Graham,

The middle ground approach you point to at the end of your comment is how I see successful orgs doing it: pick 2 or 3 high-level buckets and manage to those rather than trying to get granular/fancy with RM right off the bat.

As far as right versus consistent, I would go with consistent, particularly if you can do so in a rational, transparent, and defensible way. Often there is no clear "right" way to do RM, so it's more sustainable and effective over the long term to adopt a consistent answer to finding the right way.

Thanks for jumping in!

Cheers,

Joe

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Submitted by Blake Richardson, CIP, CRM March 10, 2011 - 5:41 PM

Joe - provocative your are. My heart tells me you are not necessarily advocating the things you say, but challenging RIM professionals to consider why nothing is happening. My belief is that nothing is happening (in most cases) because we are failing to effectively convince the senior management folks of our organizations that we need funding and resources to implement the tools that will make our companies operate more informationally (pardon the new word) efficient and reduce the proverbial risks. I do not believe the intent of RIMmers or Legal is to keep everything forever, but without proper technology in place, we will have to sleep in the bed that has been made.

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Submitted by Blake Richardson, CIP, CRM March 10, 2011 - 5:43 PM

Please pardon the error in the first sentence - long day.

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Follow your heart

Submitted by Joe Shepley March 11, 2011 - 12:43 PM

Blake,

You're quite right that I'm playing devil's advocate here, but with a purpose: we typically take compliance for granted...so much so that we never bother to ask what the return is on our efforts. And yet knowing the true return on those efforts (whether in the form of reduced costs, operational efficiencies, lower risk profile, or even simply the positive PR of being seen as good corporate citizens) is critical not only for organizations as a whole, but for the departments responsible for compliance--after all, as you rightly point out, they need to secure funding from CXOs just like everyone else.

Anyway, thanks for rolling up your sleeves and contributing to the conversation!

Cheers,

Joe

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Picking up the gauntlet (sort of)

Submitted by Melinda Catapano March 10, 2011 - 5:57 PM

Very thought-provoking and interesting approach, Joe. And you make some very good points, which are certainly valid in some situations. Alas, I disagree many of your premises, and I certainly don't think it is wise to keep everything forever simply because it is the path of least resistance. (Key here = WISE.)

Just curious: Were there any Certified Records Managers in your panel discussion audience? I find it difficult/impossible to believe that CRMs do not oversee the systematic disposal or archiving of electronic content across the organization according to their retention schedule - similar to their systematic disposal or archiving of physical content. Even as a CRM Candidate (and ECMm) I practice this in my organization! We're not perfect or in total compliance, but we are working hard to educate our employees and raise the awareness of the need to get rid of expired electronic records, documents, and information so we aren't continually forced to search for the needle in the haystack(s). Or worse yet, in our silos.

Now what amazes me... is that destruction of electronic DATA (in databases, of course) is rarely, if ever discussed -- much less facilitated by technology vendors. Here in our lovely city we have several dozen sophisticated and very expensive databases currently in use (plus dozens of legacy databases) and NOT ONE, to my knowledge, allows for selective destruction of expired data. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT? I routinely sit in on software vendor presentations and demos and ask about their records management capabilities; I routinely get the answer "Yes, we manage 'stuff'." Which of course they DON'T - at least not in a typical RIM approach and certainly not according to GARP.

Joe, I'm sure you and many of your readers fully realize that the active management of records and information *throughout the entire lifecycle* is waaaay different than being able to simply find something and hang onto it 'forever or 5 years or system replacement, whichever comes first.'

So pick on the technology vendors instead of the records managers, will ya? ;)

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Vendor Says "Ouch!"

Submitted by Chris Walker March 10, 2011 - 6:10 PM

Melinda

You are either sitting with the wrong vendors or the vendors are sending the wrong people. Either way, not good for you, not good for us (the vendors).

Cheers!
Chris

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Believe it or not

Submitted by Joe Shepley March 11, 2011 - 12:51 PM

Melinda,

Many of the folks there were CRMs, but I think there might be a misunderstanding of what I meant by "systematic": I meant "using a software tool to automate the process" rather than "in a systematic way." I was also talking primarily about electronically stored information (ESI)--precisely the kind of content you are amazed no one really talks about purging.

And I definitely agree that the there's more to information lifecycle management than just finding/retaining information. But what I was hoping to shine some light on was the fact that we practitioners are not used to having to argue the cost/benefits of doing so the way other parts of the business (e.g., sales, customer service, supply chain, etc.) have to. We just kind of assume that because good ILM is the right thing to do, that orgs should do it--or, if pressed, we trot out some well-worn Gartner or Forrester statistics on time saved per employee through better findability or version control or something.

But what I've tried to do here is to take the first step toward netting out the value of good ILM/RM: what would the true cost of doing nothing be? What do we risk and what do we gain? How different does our risk profile look? Our operating model? Etc.

The idea isn't to seriously advocate for doing nothing, it's to foreground the real costs of doing something.

Thanks for taking the time to jump in!

Cheers,

Joe

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Not Zero This Time

Submitted by Chris Walker March 10, 2011 - 6:03 PM

"What if we just scrapped our RM department, since regardless of their efforts, we tend to keep everything forever anyway?" --> not a bad idea. But let's re-animate them as information asset managers responsible to a CIO that focusses on Information instead of the so typical technology.

"What if we accepted the fact that keeping everything forever is how organizations work and tried to find ways to make that feasible instead of trying to turn every employee into a document hygiene expert?" --> Perfect. But at the same time let's also reduce that amount of stuff we actually let in by properly educating users and providing them with appropriate tools.

"What if we instituted a retention cut off point that met the 80/20 rule for our corporate records (say, ten years) and then ruthlessly and without exception purged according to that timeline? Would the savings on technology, storage, and employee time outweigh the compliance costs and risks?

What if we approached litigation exposure as a cost equation rather than a risk equation? Could we reduce what we spend managing litigation by managing/purging content according to simpler, less expensive, and unwavering rules (e.g., delete everything after ten years no matter what) while at the same time being more strategic about how we settle lawsuits to help reduce the number of times we even have to do discovery?" --> you need to do these in tandem. Then move to Canada where we're less inclined to litigate just for fun.

"Is all the time and effort we spend trying to improve how we manage content really just a waste of time? Are we going at it the wrong way around by trying to change behavior that clearly seems to be central to how employees work (save everything, use the system of least resistance, keep multiple duplicate copies of everything) rather than applying our time and energy to minimizing the negative consequences of that behavior?" --> it's not always a waste of time. We are going about it the wrong way because RM is risk driven not value driven.

http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/Retention-Needs-an-Enema

http://christianpwalker.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/records-matter-declaration-doesnt/

http://christianpwalker.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/enough-already-we-get-it/

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Value

Submitted by Joe Shepley March 11, 2011 - 12:57 PM

Chris,

I agree that the narrow focus on risk is part of the problem. It's the "tell me the color of the truck that didn't hit me" problem, aka, "I've been using this dragon repellent I bought for six months now and it works great--not a dragon in sight."

It's hard to quantify RM/compliance risk in the way that we can quantify other kinds of risk (e.g., the risk that if we don't staff up at the warehouse, given our current order volume, we will fall behind), so we often get a bit lazy and keep the discussion around what ifs and doomsday scenarios.

One of my goals here was to play devil's advocate and try to surface the literal costs of doing nothing about RM as a way to set the stage for a value-based discussion of RM.

Thanks for your sustained responses--appreciate the willingness to share your thoughts!

Cheers,

Joe

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Fortune 500, or Fortune 50,000?

Submitted by Daniel O'Leary March 11, 2011 - 12:20 PM

The approach that a Fortune 500 company takes towards RM is vastly different than the top 50,000. I think small companies should follow your 10 year 80/20 cutoff rule, but store everything by default.

At smaller organizations, having a dedicated records manager or even ECM repository might night work. It would be better to archive all e-mail, have audit trails, and backup network drives. While this approach is not ideal, something here is better than nothing.

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

Fortune 500

Submitted by Joe Shepley March 11, 2011 - 12:58 PM

Daniel,

Good point--all of this is really directed at the F500 folks. You're spot on that smaller firms could take the approach I've described here in a way that F500 firms couldn't.

Thanks for diving in!

Cheers,

Joe

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

It's not all or nothing

Submitted by Wayne Hoff March 15, 2011 - 2:57 PM

It seems to me that your standard for RM success is perfection - while few organizations have achieved the ultimate goal of robust enterprise-wide electronic data disposition, it's a big leap to assume that the RM function in those companies is therefore completely useless. Similarly we don't throw out the IT department because they've failed to achieve 100% uptime, or throw out the legal department because they don't win every legal dispute.

Things may be different someday, but today it's still a terrible business decision to keep everything forever, no matter how cheap and easy it is to implement it. Records managers have the background to manage data better than that.

Report

Was this helpful? Yes No

This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International

The Global Community of Information Professionals

Community

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Rate Post

Add a Comment

Comments

Blog Search

ERM Automation with SharePoint

Records Management Best Practices

ERM Training

Latest Comments

Get The Research

Grow Your Expertise

Expand Your Network