Accelerating out of the recession: new approaches to executing RIM Program strategies.

• Author: Dearstyne, Bruce W.
• Position: Records and information management

The volume, velocity, variety, and value of information assets organizations are creating and receiving provide a platform for information governance professionals to step up to a more strategic leadership role.

The recession is ending, the economy is recovering, and enterprises are bouncing back. The future looks promising--particularly for records and information management (RIM) program leaders who are willing to try nontraditional approaches to meeting the challenges posed by the current "disruptive" forces in information management.

Challenges of the Disruptive, Digital Age

In "Top 10 Technology Trends Impacting Information Infrastructure, 2013," Gartner Inc. describes several of these disruptive forces, including big data, an expanding information infrastructure, and new strategies for assigning value or risk to information assets.

The report stresses there are big opportunities and risks going forward: "Significant innovation continues in the field of information management (IM) technologies and practices driven by the volume, velocity and variety of information, and the huge amount of value--and potential liability--locked inside all this ungoverned and underused information."

Additionally, the report emphasizes that "practically all information assets must be available for delivery through varied, multiple, concurrent and, in a growing number of instances, real-time channels and mobile devices." Because of these ongoing "disruptions," it's more important than ever to be able to share and repurpose information for "multiple context delivery and use cases," the report suggests.

Taking non-traditional approaches to the seven traditional strategies described below will help RIM programs adapt to, and shape, this complicated future.

1. Apply a High-Visibility, Decisive Leadership Style.

   Until recently, many leadership authorities encouraged a deliberate, extensively consultative style. The leader, they proclaimed, needed to build consensus and be sure all issues were resolved, resources aligned, and stakeholders fully supportive before taking action.

   Newer literature, more attuned to the fast-changing, post-recession world, advises less consultation and deliberation and more accelerated decision-making, even when the evidence is incomplete or ambiguous. In fact, the more innovative the program, the less likely it is to have incontrovertible evidence before deciding whether to change course.

   "Eat the uncertainty," advises Liz Mellon in Inside the Leader's Mind, and beware of "the spurious comfort that data can provide."

   According to Mellon, the leader has no safety net and needs to know when to take risks, make tough decisions, ensure implementation, and assume responsibility if things go wrong. Being quicker and more fluid in making decisions will pay off. "Whereas some dither, you move to action," she writes.

2. Build Resilience into Programs. The recession has also provided insights through experience about cushioning against and bouncing back from adversity and unanticipated events. In the book Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back, authors Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy define resilience as "the capacity of a system, enterprise, or a person to maintain its core purpose and integrity in the face of dramatically changed circumstances."

   Resilience varies from program to program, but resilient enterprises have these traits:

   * They proactively monitor their environments, seek out potentially disturbing information, identify potential disruptions, and look for early warning signals that the program may not be meeting stakeholder expectations.

   * They build in flexibility and safe-guards against disruption, such as...