Sometimes I am amazed at how folks I used to respect a great deal act so unprofessional. Are any of you on the SPAM list of Michael Lissack? He is constantly bombarding folks about his real estate deals in Naples, FL, along with requests for contributions for his campaign to run for a municipal government post. Here is someone who has made an excellent name for himself and has widely promoted and evolved the fields of Emergence Theory and Chaos Theory. However, he has become a pest and nuisance with his email.

I have tried a number of times to get deleted/unsubscribed from his broadcast email list. Here is a recent interchange with him when I again asked him to delete me from his list:

>>>
>From:  Michael Lissack <lissack@lissack.com>
>To: Michael Sutton <msutton@westminstercollege.edu>
>Date:  9/7/2009 11:36 AM
>Subject:  Re: Your Email
>Michael
>
>most people who do not wish ...

Another interesting question my MBA learners often ask me. As I hope you have ascertained from my dialogue so far, I believe excellent document management is a critical function for any knowledge-based organization. Moreover, in 2000, I made a commitment to achieve a PhD in Knowledge Management at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, CANADA. I did this because I had many theories I wanted to research and investigate about organizations, team-based groups, and their individual members and leaders. I needed to learn more about collaboration associated with knowledge creation, sharing, and management of document objects. By achieving my doctorate in 2007, I now have the academic qualifications to speak authoritatively about knowledge management, and specifically document management. Hopefully, that may mean I can have greater impact on this domain than when I was just a qualified practitioner. Only time will tell, and I have noticed that I now have less time available than when I ...

Regretfully, in my opinion the successes are less than 15% of all enterprises, from small to medium sized firms, all the way to very large corporations. The public sector has failed miserably. The success of a digital document initiative does not depend upon the size of the firm or the amount of money spent. I have found the critical success factor to be the motivation of the champion and sponsor. These individuals commit and deliver to a vision that is pragmatic. The achievement does not have to be elegant nor does it need to be IT-centric. The success is based upon the relationship building the champion and sponsor carry out within the organization, “one knowledge worker at a time.” Moreover, the champion must be able to articulate the personal business value proposition for an individual to take on the discipline and rigour required to make such an initiative work. This approach, a people-centric strategy, seems to prevail throughout the reported cases of success.

The basic functionality and tools we saw in many applications by the year 2000 have not been extended much since 1996, when my book, Document Management for the Enterprise, was publsihed by Wiley & Sons.

If nothing else the scalability of an EDMS has become much more robust and reliable. However, the cost/seat to acquire a software application for a document management initiative has been reduced from over $5,000/seat to less than $25/seat. However, that is not the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Many organizations will still have to spend $2K-3K/person to educate, train, and convert existing users to any new application. Of course, in a period of recession, many organizations will not see the ROI for efficiency and increased performance capability, since this is often considered an intangible benefit for an EDMS/ECMS. Of course, they are wrong, but why try to change the mind of someone who still thinks that a filename of 8 characters is a parsimonious way of saving ...

Another question often asked of me at conferences when I deliver a keynote or seminar. My response is simple: Attitude, attitude, attitude, and courage! The successful implementation of a digital document initiative requires passion, rigour, organization, and discipline—what I call the PROD Manifesto to my clients.

I recollect consulting with a Canadian Federal Government Department (which shall remain nameless) in the 1980s and 1990s. I was brought back into the organization to execute the same study every 3-4 years because the personnel would change, and nobody could locate any copies of previous consulting studies. I would bring in the older copies of my study to the Director in charge, and they would say: “That is exactly the kind of study my Director General (DG) wants!” I would say: “It had already been done, but no one had the courage to implement the accountability and responsibility requirements to make it work.”

The Director would subsequently ...