What Counts?

2023 Episode 48 – Who knows what lurks behind the use of spreadsheets in your organization? Could spreadsheets be masking serious information governance issues? Join information governance consultants, Maura Dunn and Lee Karas, as they share the top three issues masked by the use of spreadsheets at various organizations. Each episode contains powerful information to help improve the visibility of...

Best kept secret to implementing process improvement

Top 5 IG Challenges

Does your organization struggle with whether or not to capture chats, text messages, or to record conference calls?

Do you struggle to have your Records Retention Schedule gain utilization across your organization?

Each episode contains powerful information to help improve the visibility of your information governance program and increase its effectiveness across your organization.

2022 Episode 42 – Connecting information classification with your organization’s records retention schedule can help protect high risk records. Selecting the correct classification levels and applying those classifications to record categories in your records retention schedule will result in more practical implementation. In this episode, your hosts, Maura Dunn and Lee Karas, provide guidance on...

2022 Episode 41 – Creating a practical records retention schedule for your organization to implement should not be a complicated endeavor. More and more, organizations are encountering challenges to managing their records making it important to keep what is necessary and remove what is not. Some organizations choose to ignore the risks associated with storing unnecessary information too long, and...

2022 Episode 40 – Policy implementation is made easier when policies contain the “what needs to happen” and procedures contain the “how to make it happen”. Both work best when policy creation becomes a collaborative approach and the group that dictates the “what” works closely with the group or groups that help implement the “how”. In this episode, your hosts, Maura Dunn and Lee Karas, give policy...

2022 Episode 39 – Policy development has evolved over time. There are some do’s and don’ts in this episode that you should know. We look at how policies have evolved over time and how to best develop policies in today’s day and age for your organization as they relate to information governance. Your hosts, Maura Dunn and Lee Karas, describe the process of information governance policy development....

2022 Episode 38 – Tracking asset data is essential for making informed decisions. Does your company keep asset data in separate siloed systems? Are manual processes needed to link the appropriate asset information from system to system? In this episode, we look at asset data challenges related to varying asset identification and naming methods that are prevalent within most asset-heavy organizatio...

2022 Episode 37 – Do you have a document management problem or an asset data management problem? If your organization is not able to accurately trace the business case for capital investments backwards to its original purpose, funding, and design you may have an asset data management challenge. The age of an asset does make it harder to keep track of all the records, but it’s not an excuse for not...

2022 Episode 36 – Your project champion network is one of the most vital components to successful implementation of an […]

2022 Episode 36 – Your project champions are one of the most vital components to successful implementation of an information governance project. As noted in this episode, project champions are typically senior-level leaders in your organization. Therefore, use their time wisely and keep them involved in carrying a consistent company message back to their teams. Project champions understand informa...

2022 Episode 35 – This episode points out three key steps to achieving organizational change and using your champion network effectively. This is What Counts, by TrailBlazer Consulting, LLC, a podcast for the information and data governance do-it-yourselfers. Want to grab your audience’s attention without sending emails or doing more training? Give a listen to this episode to find out how. In this...

2022 Episode 34 – Using training to implement change management seems logical. What type of training best fits your organization’s learning style? What kind of training is available; who is your audience; how do you gauge impact; is more better when training for change? These are all good questions that will be answered in this episode regarding achieving successful training to help improve your c...

2022 Episode 33 – This is our fourth episode in a series on using change management to help improve your chances for successful information governance project implementation. Today, we talk about using your project plan as a communication tool to connect with your stakeholders at every stage of a particular project. In this episode, Maura Dunn and Lee Karas discuss how your project plan should be...

2022 Episode 32 – This is our third episode in a series on using change management to help move your information governance projects forward. We continue our conversation with Donna Vitalie to uncover creative ways to implement change management and understand the “why” and “how” to do change management. In this episode, Maura Dunn, Lee Karas, and special guest Donna Vitalie talk about using push...

2022 Episode 31 – This is our second episode in a series on using change management to help move your information governance projects forward. Today, we welcome Donna Vitalie to the conversation to help give us an understanding of this important tool in your toolbox. In this episode, Maura Dunn, Lee Karas, and special guest Donna Vitalie define and discuss change management (CM), organizational de...

2022 Episode 30 – This is the first episode in a series on change management approaches we have used to implement successful information governance projects. Remember back to Episode 3. That’s where we discuss our process for developing assessment questions and how to hone in on data management challenges. In this episode, we discuss linking what you learned during the assessment to refine your ch...

2022 Episode 29 – Monitoring progress, showing immediate impact, and keeping stakeholders engaged is an important part of project status reporting. In this episode, we discuss a few ways for measuring and monitoring project progress, as well as, celebrating key victories along the way. Maura Dunn and Lee Karas discuss in this 16:51 episode a few important real-time progress reporting suggestions f...

2022 Episode 28 – Hey, who was that person that worked on the customization of XYZ software? Who was the vendor that made the decision to fill in the requirements gaps during the implementation process? It is a substantial risk to any organization not to plan for the knowledge transfer process when taking on large-scale projects. Documentation is key to the knowledge transfer process, but what els...

2022 Episode 27 – Taking a risk management approach to project planning. Thinking through large-scale risks and assigning cost to those risks will help focus resource allocation in your project plan. Does this approach add more time to the planning process? Is it worth assessing all these risks upfront? Decide for yourself after listening to this episode where we share our experience developing pr...

2022 Episode 26 – Internal and external key resources to have on your team to get your information governance (IG) projects completed. From IT to Legal, but more importantly, the business side of your organization. Maura Dunn and Lee Karas discuss how selecting the correct key resources to have on your team will dramatically increase buy-in and commitment for implementing your information governan...

2022 Episode 25 – In this episode, we discuss developing a detailed project plan for implementing your information governance projects. From simple to complex projects, learn certain activities and tasks that you should build into your project plan that will help prepare stakeholders and better communicate project timing and milestones. Listen as Maura Dunn and Lee Karas discuss how to document th...