My most recent OxyMoron conversation was with Angela Watt, who will be speaking at the MER Conference on May 10-12 Indianapolis. Her topic? Mission Possible with IG: Shifting Culture through Governance and Collaboration. [Note: Previous OxyMoron conversations can be found HERE.]
Just as a reminder, my OxyMorons show is all about discovering the secret sauce that drives the Practical Dreamers and Visionary Pragmatists among us. Angela is a Certified Information Professional with 17 years of cross industry experience working in managing information assets for municipal government and private industry. She is is a private consultant guiding organizations through their governance journey.
Here’s my summary of the conversation. Any errors in consolidation are mine.
What is the most surprising song on your playlist?
Perhaps more surprising is the breadth of my playlist. It has Rage Against the Machine on the same list as "Slow Down" by Sissel Kyrkjebo, Bass Nectar, Debussy, Big Momma Thornton, Eagles, Missy Elliot, and Backstreet Boys. I have something from every genre, and play depending on the mood I want to invoke.
Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, in the Farnese collection, Naples – Photo by Paolo Monti, 1969
Any favorite books during COVID?
This year, I’ve been focusing on books related to stoicism because I find that it really helps kind of balance out the emotionality of everything that is going on. So right now, I'm reading The Daily Stoic.
How did you wind up doing information governance?
When I was 6 years old, my mom would take me to the library. After a while, I asked the librarian if I could help and she'd give me little things to do, like organizing the bookmarks and putting children's books in numerical order. In junior and senior high school, I was still volunteering in the libraries.
I went to the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology to get my diploma in Library and Information Sciences. This was when Records Management was still part of the Library Tech diploma. I chose to take both learning streams just in case. After managing corporate (automated a petroleum library 15 years ago) and secondary libraries, I moved into information management and governance for local government in Calgary, Edmonton, Spruce Grove, and now here we are 20 years later. Still organizing information.
What have been your biggest challenges in “selling” governance?
I think we’ve been trying to sell “governance” as a product based on fear. We sell fear to leadership, saying that there's risk if they don't “do” governance. We say the same thing down the chain, and hope for buy-in and compliance. We must ask whether we are getting a good ROI with that approach. Is this the best way to achieve results that we want?
With COVID, there was a brief aha moment when leaders suddenly realized that their organizations were paper based at a time when it was critical that they work electronically and remotely. We need to face a hard truth: WE care deeply about IG. Our customers do not (or not as much as we do). Which means we need to change our approach.
I’ve heard you speak about the need for IG to become deeply curious about the business. How do you do that?
We need to focus on how we can make a bigger impact on the corporate culture. Culture changes when we encourage people to work better together. Culture changes when people…
…trust that they can do their job well with the information they need.
…work with the most current information and don't have to redo work.
…can access information from the people they need to without begging or submitting a request.
…they don't have to be a records manager to use our systems of record.
On a practical level, we need to spend more time talking to the people who are actually doing the work. We need to interview these people to see how they work, and then follow that story back up the chain.
Who is accessing information?
Why are they accessing it?
What do they need most to do their job effectively?
How does what they do integrate with what the rest of the corporation does?
How is their area perceived?
What are their challenges?
We need to focus on making the lives of our employees easier, because we're making it easier for them to manage the information within their own systems and easier to find and access information in systems they don’t control.
What do you do when you come up against a brick wall?
First, find out why the wall is there in the first place. One thing I hear often is, "We tried that, it didn't work, we’re not doing it again.” Find out why. What was the culture at the time? Was the reason it didn't go forward a lack of support? Lack of time? Identify the issues and then figure out how to specifically address them. Create a community approach to taking the walls down.
What do you know NOW that you wish you knew THEN?
Early on, I focused HARD on the champions, and not much on the naysayers (mostly because at the time I didn't feel it was in my wheelhouse to do anything). I think looking back, I should have done the opposite. I think I would have had the harder conversations. I should have focused on how to address the sticks in the wheel, rather than the people pushing the cart. Supporters and evangelists will be there for you, trust that.
Before doing anything, address the sticks in the wheel – the people who oppose your project. People are attached to their information and will resist efforts to change. Connect with WHY they are resisting – and understand that their WHY often has nothing to do with bringing in technology. The technology itself is irrelevant. If you take the time to determine how technology matches up against what workers actually do, it will make your job easier.
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I’ll be launching a market research project on how (and whether) organizations are optimizing the automated governance capabilities of M365. Get sponsorship details HERE.
Advance registration is open for the MER Conference, May 10-12 in Indianapolis, HERE.
And make sure to check out our previous posts…