Eleven is a design failure. We count: Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen... Then suddenly: Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. If we were inventing English today, would anyone create "eleven" and "twelve" on purpose? Probably not. And don’t even get me started on French. Quatre-vingt-dix. OMG STOP. It should be TENTY-ONE. Not eleven. TENTY-TWO. Not twelve. TENTY-THREE. Not thirteen. I know I sound like Lewis Black, but I’ll happily die on this hill. It’s not really about numbers

A 60-minute meeting recording is not a meeting summary. A transcript is not a procedure. A Teams recording is not a training resource. And "it's in the recording somewhere" is not a documentation strategy. Many of us have probably found ourselves digging through old recordings (or *ahem* 36,910 screenshots) trying to answer what should have been a simple question. The information technically existed. Somewhere. In a recording. Maybe in a transcript. Possibly in a Teams chat.

Organizations often invest in new tools to fix existing problems. Sometimes the tools help. Sometimes they expose what’s already broken. When workflows are unclear, ownership is inconsistent, or standards vary across teams, new technology tends to amplify those issues instead of solving them. I’ve seen this happen with records systems, intake processes, and internal tracking tools. The system works as designed, but the underlying process was never clearly defined. Better outc

“This meeting should’ve been an email.” But what about the meetings that needed an email? I can’t count the number of times I’ve participated in a meeting where the meeting happens and… that’s it. That’s the deliverable. No agenda. No recap. No action items. No record that the meeting happened other than a calendar block and, maybe, a recording no one will ever watch, or a transcript someone might dig through later, trying to find what could’ve been documented from the outset

One of the most common operational issues I see isn't complexity. It's unclear ownership. A task gets shared across teams. Responsibility gets assumed, questions get redirected, and deadlines slip. Everyone is involved. No one is accountable. I’ve seen this in policy implementation, internal workflows, and public-facing work. A request comes in, touches three departments, and no one is clearly responsible for seeing it through to completion. Clear ownership doesn't mean doing

I’ve worked in government, nonprofit, and private-sector environments, and I’ve noticed something consistent. Most organizations have the same core problems. Unclear ownership. Weak process. Poor communication. Misaligned incentives. Too much urgency and not enough planning. The language changes by sector, but the underlying issues are usually the same. A policy initiative stalls in government. A nonprofit program struggles to grow. A private-sector project misses deadlines.

There’s a difference between a transition question and ongoing reliance. A quick follow-up a week or two after someone leaves is normal. It happens. But when an organization is still calling months later, something else is going on. That’s not about helpfulness or professionalism. It’s about missing infrastructure. If knowledge lives in one person’s head instead of in systems, documentation, and clear handoffs, the work doesn’t transfer. It follows the person out the door. At

Mission-driven organizations are often asked to solve complex problems while operating with thin staffing, aging systems, and constant funding pressure. Passion is essential, but it isn't enough. Strong nonprofits need infrastructure, too: sound governance, realistic staffing models, clear ownership, healthy finances, and practical systems that support the mission. Too often, administrative capacity is treated as overhead instead of impact-enabling infrastructure. The organiz

Most discussions about records and information governance focus on federal or private-sector frameworks. Those are complex, but relatively structured. Local government is where things get messy. FOIA does not apply to municipal records. For that, you need state law, and those laws vary widely. Just the acronyms can be confusing: FOIL, OPRA, APRA, FOAA, CPRA, GRAMA, IPRA, PIA, Sunshine Law, Open Records... even the baseline is hard to track. Then come the state-by-state nuance

Ballston Spa’s FOI debate gets at a problem I see often: agencies talk about records access as though the main issue is requester behavior, when the real issue is usually process. Volume is unpredictable. Capacity is limited. Training is uneven. When agencies are not set up to efficiently handle routine requests, legal review, delays, and frustration multiply. All of that is real. But FOI is still a right. It can’t be treated as abuse simply because compliance is inconvenient

Many executives believe their organizations would struggle to pass an AI governance audit. To those of us who have worked in Information Governance, that is not at all surprising. A lot of organizations are moving quickly on AI adoption while moving slowly on oversight. New tools are being introduced before core questions are answered: Who owns decisions? How are risks reviewed? What data is being used? How are outputs checked? How are records retained? Who is accountable whe