Paperless Adventures
Update, November 2021: First published in 2014 on a previous blog, I took a look at some the background I had used when starting projects to integrate collaborative technology to replace clunky paper processes in a higher education institution. This is an interesting review of the topic.
A while ago I published some blog posts elsewhere, relaying information about a project I was engaged in to look at how to bring paperless methodologies into management functions in an HE institution. This post serves to summarize this project.
Background
During the 1960s and 1970s, as new technology started to penetrate offices that had not changed substantially in a century or more, the promise of the eradication of paper, the "Paperless office", became a popular concept. In 1975, BusinessWeek published an article, "The Office of the Future", which suggested that the paperless office was "not that far off". However, at the start of 2014, most people I know still carry around a notepad, don't you?
It is wrong to suggest that between the 1970s and now there has not been a paper reduction revolution. Most work is done on computers, and generally, even if a document is to be printed, it originates in some sort of digital format. But my experience has been that universities have not been very good at joining together their processes digitally, and in a lot of cases, a paper trail is still an important part of the process where two different functions meet.
However, while looking into these day-to-day process issues, my interest in this area also started to centre on other aspects of work-life where the paperless concept had yet to gain significant traction.
Life On the Road
I realized that despite looking closely at reducing paper in a lot of administrative processes to make information sharing easier, that actually, as a senior manager, the information I had was often equally vital to share, and a lot less accessible as my daily routine took me around campus from meeting to meeting, with little time in the office.
Where those core administrative processes did not work in a technologically sophisticated way, the staff that were working on them were based in offices, with computers and phones, so very often found ways around the parts of the process that were cumbersome or made information sharing difficult. My notepad, on the other hand, was a very different story, and I soon discovered that the process of sharing information was far more a live issue for me, than it was for a lot of my staff.
To make my life out of the office easier, I carried a smartphone (first a Blackberry and then an iPhone), often a laptop, and, on occasion, an iPad. I could email back and forth remotely between different meetings, set up catch up sessions with my staff to brief them as necessary, but a disproportionate amount of my time was spent working out how to do something useful with all of the information I was exposed to.
I also discovered that this was not an issue unique to me, but one that impacted most staff in leadership roles similar to mine. And to cap this off, feedback from our staff body revealed that they felt that leaders, like me, were not very good at sharing information and, to some extent, there was a culture of secrecy.
Understanding the Problem
As part of broader business improvement efforts, I set about making this issue a project to move forward. Through research, I discovered that despite all there is written about building processes for paper reduction and utilizing these for information sharing, there is very little in terms of content and case studies that apply to the leadership scenario I have described. The focus of these initiatives generally seems to serve the needs of big administration processes, with senior users of this data falling into line with whatever solution is planned.
The problem I saw was one where actually we were getting very little value out of technology investment. We were equipping our senior managers with tools like iPhones and laptops, but not putting in place any standards or procedures to gain additional value through them being used in the field.
Further to this, there was a great deal of information floating around that it was difficult to get value from. In an average day, a senior manager might spend 4-5 hours out of the office at various meetings. For the majority of these he/she would receive agendas and papers, that would be printed by themselves or an assistant for consumption prior to the meeting. These resources might be annotated to highlight key points for discussion. Then during the meeting itself notes would often be taken for personal consumption, and then minutes sent out later on.
On any given day this process might consume 50 sides of paper, which would then need to be reviewed during normal office time to make actions happen, before being filed away. The process of consuming, sharing and actioning this information was cumbersome; and because staff around us saw this as a process, rather than just normal culture, there was a sense that sharing was the exception and that secrecy was the norm.
Sure, some of our managers did things differently. iPads were popular, and all of this paper might be shifted out onto them, but because there was no institution framework ensuring that everyone was using these sorts of resources in similar ways, this failed to join up with the other systems that were in place. A manager would end up more paper free, and more technically advanced, but this in itself would not serve any wider agenda of information sharing or openness.
Building a solution
I decided that to have an impact on the cultural issues of information sharing that should be a result of any paperless initiative, we had to build a solution that put our senior leaders at the center of this change. We needed to penetrate a view from staff that there was a culture of secrecy whilst delivering a solution that made senior managers the flag bearers for new solutions that would drive improved processes, efficiency and paper reduction.
After much research, we decided upon Microsoft's rarely used OneNote product as the base for a solution. This, coupled with SharePoint and Windows powered tablets, provided a platform which offered a digital notepad, linked into Outlook, enabled a total replication of familiar paper storage systems in a centralized model, and added shareability and searchability where before there was none.
The premise was simple. Everything that previously existed on paper would now exist in OneNote notebooks. Depending on the content, these notebooks would be shared differently on SharePoint, so some might only be shared between a manager and their personal assistant, whereas others might be shared with the whole team. Entries in OneNote would be linked with diary entries in Outlook, so for the manager, finding the right information would be as easy as clicking on a link in their diary.
Suddenly, when information needed to be shared, a simple email could be accompanied by annotated papers and inked notes, to give a complete overview of the issue to be discussed. Additionally, finding information no longer was dependent on leafing through personal notebooks, as OneNote makes everything (even inked comments) searchable.
I will write more about the challenges of getting people to switch to this sort of solution at another time, but certainly you will find that some of your staff are far more glued to their notepad and pen than others - just like any change.
Looking to the future
It is increasingly common to see staff in all organizations, including universities, kitted out with the latest technological gizmos, whether that be a laptop, tablet, iPhone or whatever else is around the corner. My belief is that the true challenge for a lot of organizations to is to up the multiplier of value the organization gains through this investment, over the previous, often simpler, solution.
There is a growing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) revolution, which is often hard for universities to deal with. However, I think this is often a symptom of the lack of digital guidance that organizations provide to staff, in that they spend time finding their own solution which is often ported across from one they use at home for their own personal activities.
Like any other business improvement, these investments should be about output, and those outputs should add value. Issues of sharing culture, openness of information and administrative efficiency should be paramount, and should be considered as part of one package.
Challenges to do more with less are not going to go away anytime soon in higher education, therefore finding solutions that truly increase that value multiplier are the only way we will meet the needs of the future. The way that everyone in the organization deals with information is going to be an important part of this, and we should have a range of different solutions that respond to the different needs and opportunities that exist for each group.
Title Photo Credit: Christa Dodoo on Unsplash
