In my last blog post, I wrote about Alvin Toffler's quote about the illiterate of the 21st century would be those who can't learn, unlearn and relearn.  I came across another related blog post a couple of days later by Tim Kastelle at the Innovation Leadership Network titled Don't Hire Experience, Hire Learners.  I agree with Tim in advising that if your industry is stable with very little change, then perhaps you can afford to hire someone with more experience. But if your industry is undergoing a lot of change, you should look for someone that is a skilled learner.  If your industry is constantly changing, then the skilled learner will be able to adapt faster and possibly have less baggage than the person with a lot of experience who would rather keep doing things the same way as they have learned over their career.

I was giving some thought to this in the context of the Records and Information Management (RIM) professional and the different ways content is being created today.  It's widely acknowledged that we are living in the days of more content being created than ever before (see some statistics from the IDC in this blog post).  We are also seeing content being created in new ways with Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 technologies being brought into many companies.  While there is still a need to manage the physical records, it is also acknowledged that almost all content created today is born digital.  So for the RIM professional, their industry may be stable, but their environment is undergoing many changes.

Because of this change in the landscape of what it means to manage records for an organization, do you want a RIM professional who has a lot of experience in managing physical assets (i.e. boxes of paper at offsite storage)?  Or would you prefer one that is experimenting with the new tools and understanding how to apply records management principles in managing this content? 

I disagree somewhat with Tim in his statement that a skilled learner should always trump experience.  I know that sounds a lot like the standard answer for some Records Management questions: It depends.  While a skilled learner may be quicker at understanding how these new technologies work in creating content and possibly records, I also believe they need an understanding of records management principles (e.g., experience) to ensure that any records that are created using these new technologies are kept for as long as they should be.  I am sure there are other disciplines where more balance between learning abilities and experience is necessary to be successful in the 21st century. 

I do agree with Tim in the ways you can identify skilled learners.  I have seen those patterns in several RIM professionals I am in contact with.  I also know several who aren't learning the new technologies.  Because of their lack of desire to learn the new technologies, I fear they are putting the organization at risk that records are contained in these new Enterprise 2.0 repositories and are largely unmanaged.

What do you think?  Would you prefer a RIM professional that is a continuous learner for your organization?