A huge amount of data quality mishaps are the result of disorganization, which often stems from lack of policies and procedures for filing information, lack of accountability and mismanagement, or both. Still, you can write a million guidelines on how best to file or store data and many employees will still do it wrong (or not at all). The driver that influences an employees ability to willingly WANT to organize data they collect during business operations is what seperates an organized person over a disorganized one. Which makes me wonder, where do organization skills come from? Are they internally programmed from birth, learned, or just plain forced?
I know that most of my obsessiveness with filing away and cleaning was pre-programmed by genetics. Growing up, all of my belongings were shoved under the bed, in a drawer or in the closet at all times. My mom would attempt to open the closet door and a waterfall of unorganized clothes, dolls, stuffed animals would tumble down. But ”the room is clean!” I’d always say. Later, when I realized how time-consuming cleaning that closet was (and especially how inconvenient it was being forced to clean when I had other plans), or when I needed something immediately and couldn’t find it, I realized that it was much easier to put things away correctly the first time. So I guess you could say genetics made me want to file things away, experience taught me the best way to organize them, and my mom applied the pressure that forced me to learn how to do this.
I don’t think that a child learning to clean their bedroom is very different than an adult learning to file data in an organization. Managers (like moms) should apply a healthy dose of pressure to force employees to file things correctly before they can receive perks and play with their coworkers.
Hey, it worked when we were kids didn’t it?
