I would not call myself a social media guru, but I definitely have a fascination with it. One of my favorite social media products is Hootsuite which allows me one single interface for using twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, has a blog on LinkedIn that is one of my favorites to follow. You can check it out here.
He recently wrote a post entitled "Innovate or Die: 3 Ways to Stay Ahead of the Curve" and it got me thinking about how each of us can create a culture of innovation in information governance. Here are my take always from the article.
1)Allot time for innovation. There is risk involved in researching new ideas and fear of failure can slow anyone down from looking into new ways to do things. I know for myself I can be hesitant to put forth the effort of finding more efficient ways for processes if I believe that I can't get buy-in. The reality is that those who do not risk failure have no great successes. Companies like Google or Apple encourage their employees to spend 20% of thier time to work on personal projects, so if software giants like that have this policy then why shouldn't we? Honestly, one of the things that I loved about prepping for Certified Information Professional exam is that it expanded my horizons to areas that I don't normally think about and opened my eyes to areas where records management can be more innovative.
2)Punch fear in the face: I stole that phrase from a book called "Start" by Jon Acuff. It is great to do research and have innovative ideas, but what if you are too afraid to talk to others to bounce them off of other people? I can only imagine how reluctant the person who implemented digital signatures felt because it ink signature had been done for so long and were the trusted method. When you do something different, fear can be a barricade from getting people involved, but you need a team of people who aren't yes people that will provide constructive criticism. One person may get an innovative idea, but it takes a team to make it happen. Don't be afraid to form a group for innovation from different stakeholders in your organization or different professional networks as many voices and hands can do much more then one person on their own.
3)Start an Information Governance Mafia: This is an idea I have bounced off of a couple of different type and I'd love to get the feedback of the AIIM community on this. I first had this thought when reading the book, "The Start-up of You" (which I blogged about here). In that book they call it the Paypal Mafia, and Holmes in his blog post calls it hack-a-thons. It is the idea of creating a time where people can be free to pitch new ideas, work with new people and develop new concepts, policies and practices. What appealed to me about it from "The Start-up of You" is that they describe it as a group of people concentrated to an area, that are passionate about an idea with a common bond and desire to share resources. Local ARMA and AIIM chapters are great, but they are very structured and aside from a social meet and greet time they do not facilitate brainstorming. A group like this would be smaller as large groups can hinder sharing because people can get lost in the crowd. To protect time it would also only be quarterly.
Observation one was about making time to innovate, two was about having a network whether in your organization or your professional community to share your innovative ideas and three was to create that vehicle for networking. I can understand the hesitancy to joining that network because everyone is busy and already has networks they are a part of. If someone came to you and proposed joining a quarterly professional group for creative brainstorming would it be something you are interested in or what questions would you need answered before getting involved?