Records Management: Beyond the Eye of the Storm

I've been thinking about storms a lot lately. Maybe it's because my back is still talking to metwo weeks after a blizzard dumped over 2 feet of snow in less than 24 hours or maybe it's because there's another wind-whipped storm soon to come. But I'm also thinking of Super Storm Sandy and of course, the infamous Katrina.

Itmakes me think directly about Records Management which probably leaves you scratching your head. Well, it's really quite simplethey're both difficult, and they both share a circular pattern.

It's the 360 loop that can be the toughest part of the equation. There is the front end of the storm (or RM preparation) and the back end of each. The front end is tough: preparing and executing or in my recent case, shoveling, and the back end of each process. If I hadn't taken care of the snow as it grew around me, I'd face a much more painful frozen hell of snow and ice the next day.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, although it might not be widely known, the storm blew in as a Category 4, but it was the back end of the storm that caused the catastrophic damage. New Orleans survived the full force of the front end of the storm, only to be undone on the back side. Once the storm had passed over the city, the winds shifted 180, and even with diminished strength caused the water in nearby Lake Pontchartrain to back up into the city, compromising the levees and drowning this iconic American city.

The connection to Records Management is that the challenge of preparing and managing your records as they rapidly expand seems like a storm in itself. You're inundated not with water, but records and keeping up with the process is very hard. But if you don't address this challenge head on, the backside of the storm is where the problem will drown you.

If you haven't prepared for the first part of the storm, you might get lucky and make it through but that lack of preparation means that you'll ultimately get hit with the terrible reality of not being prepared, and in the case of records management, that means costly litigation, regardless of the outcome. And just like devastation from a hurricane in New Orleans, the experts will tell you, It's not a matter of if, but when.

Without preparing and classifying your records consistently, you won't be able to find them. That means that you won't be able to find the records that can benefit you and at least as dangerous, you'll have records that could be a significant liability because you haven't destroyed them in accordance to their retention schedule.

The moral of the story is that you have to prepare for the brunt of the storm on the front end even when it's difficult in order to survive the fury of the back end of the storm.

Stay safe.

LINK:	http://blog.ironmountain.com/2013/records-management-and-storage/recor...
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