Building Healthy Information Environments (Sarah Heal and Grant Margison)

Most of the organisations that we come across have information environments that are polluted. Literally these environments are 'clogged' with stuff making it difficult for the so-called 'knowledge workers' to really do their jobs. For the full paper see Building Healthy Information Environments

EDRMS Promises and Pitfalls

The legacy of underperforming electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) implementations litter the corridors of IT departments, large and small around the country. Yet despite this high failure rate, CIO magazine recently reported that an EDRMS implementation is on the agenda for many CIOs in the next three years.

This paper outlines some of the common diseases that afflict EDRMS implementations and suggest how you can innoculate your organisation against these.

Paper available from Information Leadership.

Change Management is More Than Fluffy Toys and Newsletters (Paper delivered to RMAA Conference, Wellington, September 2007)

Surprisingly, in working with a range of organisations, we don’t come across a lot of resistance to information management projects. Typically, users recognize that something needs to be done and many are frustrated with current information failures. However, many users are also carrying the baggage of previous projects and little or no training.

Change management is a drum banged constantly in current discussions about records management. During EDRMS projects, heads nod sagely as everyone from the CEO to the vendor to the CIO states the cliche ‘This is a change project not a technology project’. Yet why is it that most change is managed so poorly?

Many organisations believe that change is synonymous with communication and that if we put up enough posters (apparently one can never have too many) and have a regular newsletter the work is done. Unfortunately, the problem with change is that peoples’ behaviour also has to change. This is where it all gets a bit sticky.

This paper takes a hard look at change management. It is illustrated with specific examples and stories from the front line trenches and will cover:

• Combining carrot and stick approaches to change;
• Using your influence to make to make your change programme credible;
• Building your influence in organisations where record-keeping is competing for attention with budgets, customer service and other ‘hot buttons’; and
• Creating clearly marked paths for users to walk down.

After this, your approach to Change Management will never be the same!

Paper available from Information Leadership.

Interview for Computerworld magazine

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/spec/4F34B9EFE7B7557ACC2571D5000EAD7E