The Communication Challenge for IM Professionals
If you're out at a social gathering and there are people you don't know its inevitable that you'll be asked 'so, what do you do for work?' and in response you have to go into details to explain what IM which usually results in a puzzled expression. Why is it that colleagues in other corporate functions such as Accounting, Communications or Human Resources are readily understood and not ours?
Redefining Our Value Proposition
It maybe the time for IM to give up and better describe the value of our corporate function delivers. So next time you get that question say something like 'I help my work make evidence- based decisions' instead. Isn't that the real reason why employees make and access records to check information and/or use them to make business decisions?
Focusing on Outcomes Over Process
Ok, we may retrieve a nice report we created occasionally just to admire it but why don't we just let go of describing what we do and just tell them what the outcome is 'evidence-based decision making.'
The Persistent Challenge of Management Apathy
Management apathy to support good recordkeeping existed in 1985 and is mostly still present today. While we like to think that we have their support, in truth its more real to start from the point that we don't.
The Impact of Digital Transformation on Control
Having worked through the rise of the digital age and the decline of paper as a records medium the explosion of data and digital tools has seen an 'unchecked' loss of central control and accessibility to most records. Employees still make business decisions whether they have full or limited access to records.
Coming Next: Communication is crucial, but lasting change requires more than just better messaging. In our final post, we'll explore the revolutionary approach of using organizational psychology to build sustainable information management cultures - and why the human element is the key to solving our digital records crisis.
This is part of a five part-blog series by Stephen Clarke MRIM, CSRIM and David Robinson. This blog series is based on the article "Future Ready? Information Management Needs a Makeover," which was first published first published in Volume 41 (May 2025) issue of iQ - The RIMPA Global Quarterly Magazine of the Records and Information Management Practitioners Alliance (RIMPA).
