Do We Really Mean “Responsibility”?
To make sure a house is sound, we periodically check the foundation for cracks. When we find one, we need to patch it up, because leaving it in place threatens the stability of the entire structure.
What if some of the most fundamental statements Information Management (IM) practitioners have been making until now are actually undermining our work? In this article I’m going to challenge two long-standing practices. Brace yourself.
First, I recommend that we remove the statement ‘Every employee is responsible for managing corporate information’ from our policies. That’s right — let’s get rid of it completely!
Just between us colleagues — be honest here — How’s that policy statement working for you anyway? Has it ever made anyone step up to the plate? Do you find that employees actually respond to that mandate? I’ll show you why — from where I sit — it’s next to useless as a policy statement.
Second, I suggest that we rethink our mantra “We help the organization manage information.” We may think that explanation adequately clarifies our role, but I contend that it actually does us more harm than good.
Policy Buy-in
To see why, let’s start with the context. We approach our work intending to cooperate with other business areas. Our goal is to achieve full engagement with our policies, often needing to overcome resistance and non-compliance.
When people are presented with a corporate policy but don’t see the benefit, I don’t want them to ignore it. Personally, I aim for a response along the lines of How does that apply in our situation? That question signals a willingness to learn, understand, and collaborate, which is consistent with our goals: we want our working relationships to be cooperative, not adversarial.
To achieve that, policy wording matters. The language and tone of a policy set the stage for all our interactions, now and going forward.
Property of the Organization
Let’s return to the statement, ‘Every employee is responsible for managing corporate information.’ If the intent is to obligate people to take specific action, it falls way short.
Our entire intellectual approach to managing corporate information is founded on the premise that the information is the property of the organization, not the individual using it. That information can become useless if not managed properly, being inaccessible for decision-makers at critical times. Worse, that information can become a liability for the organization when used in contravention either of the law or of a contract with another entity, such as a partner or customer.
The problem is that assigning responsibility for an activity is not the same as mandating action.
To see why, consider some real-world examples, such as the following policy statement issued by an airline:
Passengers are responsible for providing their own food.
That statement doesn’t obligate passengers to bring food on the flight; it simply means that the airline won’t provide it. Some passengers will bring food and others won’t. As far as the airline is concerned, either choice is fine.
The following grocery store policy is another example:
Shoppers are responsible for supplying their own bags.
Again, the statement doesn’t obligate people to bring bags to the store; it simply clarifies that the store won’t provide them. Customers can carry items home in their hands if they wish.
Finally, take the following municipal policy:
Homeowners are responsible for their own pest control.
In no way does that rule obligate homeowners to eliminate the mice from their property; it simply declares that the city won’t do it for them. Like the other statements, allocating the responsibility does not in itself mandate or prohibit any particular course of action.
Let’s look at the store’s bagging policy one step further. It’s especially confusing when a store advertising that policy actually does provide bags. Why are they taking on an activity that they claim to be someone else’s responsibility? Talk about mixed messages!
Are IM policies sending mixed messages?
Policies are of value only when they’re clear, so it’s easy to see why the statement ‘Every employee is responsible for managing corporate information’ creates a problem.
It not only doesn’t obligate any specific action, on its face it suggests to employees that the organization won’t be managing the information for them. On the analogy of the food on the plane and the mice in the house, a person reading that policy could validly assume that the rule-maker is leaving it to each individual to decide what to do.
In reality, we’re a little like the store that claims not to be responsible for providing bags, but does so anyway. Every employee is responsible for managing corporate information is a very strange message to promote when to all appearances, the organization does in fact manage the information. The organization takes responsibility for classification structures, storage technology, privacy requirements, security, lifecycle processes … I could go on and on, but the point seems obvious: if we’re trying to send a clear message about who is responsible for what, that statement doesn’t do it.
What and when?
Beyond its ambiguity around responsibility, the statement is vague about its intended scope and timing.
Taken literally, the statement makes it sound like every employee is responsible for managing the entirety of the organization’s information holdings all the time. Clearly that’s not what’s intended, so why are we expecting the employees to figure out the what and when?
Narrowing the scope with a qualifier like “their own,” as in ‘Every employee is responsible for managing their own information’, doesn’t help us. After all, we start with the premise that the organization owns the information, not the individual. In that scenario, what does “their own information” even mean? Which information becomes the “employee’s information,” and at what point in its lifecycle does it do that? And while we’re on the subject — looking at it through the employee’s eyes — if it’s my information and I am responsible for managing it, why should I listen to you about what to do?
I raise these questions, but I don’t recommend spending a lot of time answering them. From my perspective, the question is moot because the information never becomes “the employee’s information.” Instead, we should be focussed on specifying what activities we want the employee to do and when we want them done.
The importance of procedures
Effective IM practices rely on clear processes supported by sound authorities. Those authorities may include a few policy statements, but more importantly, they include
- clear standards on what well-managed information holdings look like, and
- explicit procedures supporting a variety of activities.
It is only in those procedures where assigning responsibility for specific tasks to specific individuals has any meaning. For example, we may want to impose requirements on individuals involved in a given procedure, such as
- saving a document
- managing a client file, or
- using a particular piece of software.
Those specific requirements are useful because they clarify obligations in a given situation. Generalizing them to statements like ‘Everyone is responsible for managing information’ not only removes the requirements from the employee’s reality, it does the opposite: it dilutes the obligation to take action by spreading it around. The bystander effect, a well-documented psychological phenomenon, explains why people are less likely to help in a situation where they see other potential participants. The more participants around to take responsibility, the more people assume someone else is taking action, reducing their own sense of obligation.
In other words, insisting that everyone is responsible diffuses that responsibility, discouraging rather than motivating action.
Accountability for Outcomes
This brings me to the second common statement, which is almost a mantra of the profession.
We help manage the organization’s information.
While not incorrect, this explanation understates our role and thereby makes it more confusing, because it focusses on process rather than outcome. Perhaps a sample of claims made by a professional chef will show this distinction more clearly.
Compare these:
A. I am responsible for preparing meals.
B. I am responsible for the quality of the food served.
That’s quite a difference! Which inspires more confidence? The first invokes a process; the second one, an outcome. Anyone can claim to prepare a meal, but that’s not the same as being accountable for the result.
Other statements of responsibility around the food that I’d want to hear from a professional chef are:
C. I’m responsible for the taste.
D. I’m responsible for the nutritional value.
E. I’m responsible for the freshness.
The same applies to IM professionals. As you well know, anyone can claim that they manage information; in fact, many in the organization claim to do just that, whether or not their approach has any basis in best practices.
It would bring credibility to the IM professionals’ claim of responsibility if we could clarify exactly which attributes of well-managed information we are taking responsibility for. We could raise our profile in the organization if we were prepared to make statements such as the following:
We are responsible for the accuracy of the information.
We are responsible for the quality of the information holdings.
We are responsible for the elimination of information that puts the organization at risk.
Not ‘We are responsible for lifecycling information,’ because that harkens back to describing a process, not an outcome. Since the vast majority of the employees in the organization don’t understand the process, it has no value to them. On the other hand, people do understand information accuracy, currency, integrity, and so on — even if only at a very basic level — so they can understand what it means when someone lays claim to responsibility for them.
Our colleagues in the other information domains do just that: the security group takes responsibility for safety; the Freedom Of Information group takes responsibility for release; and so on. Those groups explain their roles by emphasizing the outcome, not the process by which they reach that outcome.
A seat at the AI governance table
This distinction is more than just theoretical. We are experiencing a time when IM professionals are fighting for a seat at the table where decisions are made around the use of AI in the organization. Many groups want to be at that table, and we will need to justify our presence.
If we merely claim to be “responsible for managing the information” we’re going to be met with blank stares. After all, we’ve spent years telling people that everyone is responsible for managing information. If that’s true, then why are we claiming now to be special?
We will have a much better chance of participating if we can stake a claim to responsibility for specific attributes, for example,
We are responsible for the accuracy of the output of generative AI
We are responsible for the preservation and standardization of the prompts
We are responsible for the integrity of the metadata schema and the precision of controlled vocabularies.
Which attributes should we be looking at?
IM professionals, like chefs, would do much better to describe their responsibilities in terms of outcomes — not processes. Let’s stop telling people that we are responsible for “preparing meals” and start focussing on the quality, freshness, and nutritional value of the food.
Which aspects are the best to lay claim to? At the moment, I’m not completely sure, and I defer to the experience of those who are more in touch with the implementation aspects of IM policy.
I do know, however, that we if don’t move in this direction, we are closer to becoming superfluous in the organization… especially if we continue to claim that ‘everyone is responsible for managing information.’
Author
About the Author
- Drawing on over 40 years’ experience as a practising lawyer, business consultant, and federal government policy writer, Lewis Eisen, CIP is a leading global authority on the use of respectful language in policy drafting. He shows people how to shift their policy writing culture from confrontational to cooperative, and his approach has been adopted at organizations around the world. The 4th edition of his Amazon international bestseller Rules: Powerful Policy Wording to Maximize Engagement was released in June 2024.
