When I started reading Anne’s comments on being a pack-rat, I immediately thought of my desk. Deep drifts of contracts, proposals, white papers, schedules, memos, business cards, post-it notes and industry publications that rise and fall like the tides. I always marvel at colleagues offices that are pristine and organized. The interesting thing is that I can normally put my hands on a piece of paper without a lot of thought, so in my case, this “classification model” might not be so bad.

After thinking about it a little more, I realized that electronic content is my, and probably your, greater challenge. Where did I see that report? Was it attached to an email? On SharePoint? Stashed somewhere on my hard drive (which will ‘never’ crash)? How many hours do we spend searching and hoping to find what we are looking for?

To add to the dilemma, many of us now work remotely, at least part of the time. Working at a distance, sometimes unconnected, adds another layer of complexity. How do I synchronize the work that I do when disconnected from the network? Did I stash something on a thumb drive? Which version of the emailed memo is the latest? Is someone tracking revisions?

Technology can help, but it really starts with process and diligence. Without a well defined process for managing the information lifecycle and being diligent about it, technology can only get you so far.