Originating in the economic and demographic boom years after the Second World War, Records Management was, and remains, a set of control functions designed to deal with large and steadily growing quantities of organisational paperwork. The prevailing management ethos at that time was top down, hierarchical, command and control management built on the perceived values of measurement, predictability and centralised long-range planning.
For me, the concept of Management by Objectives (MBO), first outlined by Peter Drucker in 1954, captures perfectly the control environment in which records management grew up. Aligned objectives, flowing down from the centrally generated strategic plan, ran through organisations, stifling collective innovation and individual creativity alike in the interests of mechanistic control.
Against this backdrop, Records Managers built large and highly engineered systems that set out to control documentation from “cradle to grave”. You could see these systems working until the early 1990s in many large companies in the USA and, to some extent, in the UK but most were left abandoned as their parent organisations adapted to new global trading conditions or simply dissolved around them through acquisitions and mergers.
The widespread adoption of the PC, email systems and, finally, laptops throughout the 1990s increased the pace and volume of daily work – established clerical support and filing staff melted away in this period - leaving Records Managers bewildered and in search of the records they once so successfully managed.
The backdrop changed too, despite the efforts of many organisations to uphold the principles of scientific management. Different ways of understanding organisations began to infiltrate management writing and thinking and, for many practicing managers, the old notions of predictability and certainty were consigned to the waste bin. These ideas have yet to impact on records management which has, for two decades now, stood still while its professionals sought a way to re-establish the control over a world they have lost.
The principles for the re-frame are:
• Sort work into formal and formless – structured stuff as opposed to messy stuff (rhythm)
• Look for records that are obviously owned and used by people (proximity)
• Note when records are not owned or used very much (distance)
• Let people create the records they believe they need to create (trust)
• Work with whoever you need to work with to identify and understand the rules you have to follow (compliance)
• Be a helping hand not a scolding finger.
John D. Davies
Senior Consultant (TFPL Ltd)
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