Roadkill Marketing

My Twitter and Facebook networks saw me throw a hissy fit this week when I proclaimed a strong negative reaction to a short cartoon marketing video. I'm not reposting a link to it, figuring I've probably already driven more traffic to it than they ever expected.

The final scene showed a little cartoon humanoid hit a brick wall at high speed, shattering the wall, pancaking him/herself and splattering on the ground, only to be gawked at by his fellow humanoids. The point was to explain how to make your digital mailroom more compliant with regulations.

Oh, I get it. Nice little piece of content there... shame if anything were to happen to it.

Now there were a couple of defenders of the piece, appreciating the unique approach, liking the graphics, and in that respect I agree. If nothing else, debate got stirred - not a bad outcome for a marketer.

But it played to the most wretched message of Fear. This is what has disturbed me greatly over the past few years about the evolution of the Compliance message in ECM. It smacks of veiled threat, assuring your personal or professional damage if you don't buy a certain tool. The message encourages rigidity and conformity when what successful businesses need today is agility, critical thinking and the courage to toss out broken stupid processes. It's why the "New ROI = Risk of Incarceration" LOL line wasn't actually funny after 10,000th vendor repeated it.

Seriously, aren't companies sick and tired of the scare tactics yet? Where's a vendor with grace and vision and shares this optimism with their customers and partners?

Compliance is an outcome of doing good business. It's not an objective in itself. It can't be. Other than for vendors and consultants who thrive on selling fear.

It's 2.0'Clock... Do You Know Where Your Content Is?

(originally published @ GTEC blog: http://blog.gtec.ca/?p=489)

The hot topic this week in the social media world is all about content management. Yes, enterprise content management.

If you haven’t been following the latest news, popular social network/communication company Twitter was the target of some malicious activity this week, with some sensitive corporate documents stolen and circulated to several bloggers. ( Click here for a real-time news round-up) Individual Twitter employees were targeted and the early explanation is that some passwords were compromised. Some bloggers chose to publish the stolen/leaked information, others did not. The sources of the documents were apparently varied: online ‘cloud’ document authoring and storage platforms, mobile accounts, email addresses, and others.

This post isn’t directed at Twitter specifically, nor the individual online/mobile applications that were compromised. But I do question how an organization – whether public or private sector – could risk their sensitive corporate information on any platform not equipped with at least the basics of what we call ECM – document management, records management, retention rules, access controls and audit trails.

What Were They Thinking?

Financial projections, business plans, human resource information and resumes, customer communication: these are the content types now surfacing for public and competitor scrutiny. Organizations who view such information as competitive advantage, as strategic to growth, as evidence of trust with their staff or customers need to walk the talk and make the efforts to protect it appropriately. Access control lists to restrict sensitive data to only certain employees or groups; disposal schedules to safely destroy content that is no longer serving a specific business or regulatory purpose but could only embarrass; audit trails and activity history to know when/where/how content was accessed and by whom: this is content management “101”.

The day we get too caught up in the hip and cool world of web 2.0 and cloud applications that neglect and ignore the basics, is the day the utterly preventable backlash begins, and the progress we’ve made over the last few years towards a more open knowledge sharing culture evaporates.

My advice? Use Twitter, but don’t be like Twitter. Use social media and collaborative tools to share information that is appropriate to share and where sharing benefits your organization, your team and you.

But content that needs protection? That is only your business? That is subject to privacy laws or regulatory scrutiny? That can only harm your organization, your team and you if wrongly shared? Invest in the extra effort to put on the security blanket. The culture of sharing, of knowledge exchange, of openness has its place, but it needs to be balanced with an overall information governance strategy; one that protects organizational interests , intellectual property, and the privacy of its staff, customers, shareholders and partners.

Haunted by the Box of Rocks

Previously posted at GTEC Blog: http://blog.gtec.ca/?p=352

At GTEC 2008, I presented a seminar called “Managing Corporate Memory in Public Sector”. The well-attended session explored the pending shift in workforce demographics as the Boomer generation approaches retirement age. Sectors at most risk included government, utilities, engineering, transportation and manufacturing. I sought to explore how IT and IM professionals could play a strategic role as our workplace transforms and to minimize risk of information and knowledge loss.

Though this is no longer a new topic challenging public sector management, the situation continues to grow in urgency and awareness. Over the weekend, I noticed that Gartner Research VP, Jeffrey Mann, had twittered about a recent spike in his customer inquiries precisely on this topic. He “tweeted”: “three of this morning’s 4 calls are on knowledge management (two on capturing experience of retiring employees) who says KM is dead?”.

Whether we call it knowledge management, corporate memory preservation, succession planning… whether the project is led by IM/RM, Human Resources or IT… regardless of the tools we use to capture the intrinsic knowledge held in the brains of our most senior valued employees – we know it must be done. Public Sector is a knowledge-economy enterprise. Information, policies, and programs: services are delivered to the citizens, residents, businesses within our jurisdiction to provide a stable infrastructure for social, commercial and political activities. To not pay attention to prospect of losing mentorship, best practices, and institutional culture is to do a disservice to the investment we’ve made in cultivating depth and breadth of public sector experience.

We all have our “keep me up at night” moments. Mine is a story told to me at the annual ARMA Conference in 2006. I was conducting a workshop on this topic of “Managing Corporate Memory” and a woman from an academic institution came up to me, very pleased to see the research I had done on the topic. As part of her Records Management responsibility, she was tasked with capturing the legacy paper and physical records of the scientists and engineers who retired from her institution. She told me the story of a scientist who upon his departure handed to her a large box of ore samples. He said to her very intently, “make sure you hang on to these… they are very very important”. And so she took them. And put them on a shelf, documented with the date and location and name of the scientist who left them behind. She looked at me rather sadly, and admitted that she had no idea what those rocks meant, or WHY they were so important. There was no corporate memory preservation mandate to ensure the samples got to a new researcher who could continue the work. So to this day, they sit on a dark shelf.

Was the cure for cancer in that box of rocks? Did they tell us something about our world that could make our lives better? We may never know.

To learn more about this topic of Managing Corporate Memory, click here to listen to a recorded educational seminar we hosted earlier this year. Any comments or feedback welcomed.