Paper Prison

The first things that occurs to anyone's mind when the word Prison is mentioned are high walls and cells with steel bars. The images of guards and possibly watch dogs and sophisticated electronic monitoring systems are also associated with the word. The whole picture is complete with the scene of prisoners hoping for release and thinking of escape.
What if the prison had no walls, no cells and no guards to keep the prisoners from running away. You would say that would be Escape Day...but that is not true. You see Fear is the prison of the heart and Hopelessness is the prison of the mind.
Allow me to use this metaphor from a Hollywood movie, where the prisoners had collars around their necks that had explosives and electronic gadgets. If the prisoners tampered with the collars or tried to trespass a certain perimeter the collars would explode killing the prisoners. After several unsuccessful escape attempts in which prisoners were killed, Fear made it way to their hearts.
They were prisoners with no walls , no cells and no guards. They were prisoners of Fear. It is interesting to know that even after the electronic gadgets were disabled, no prisoner ever attempted to escape. They were prisoners of hopelessness.
We are all prisoners in al large Paper Prison, we cannot die without a supporting paper “Death Certificate” we cannot be borne without a Birth Certificate we cannot get married, we cannot go to school we cannot do anything in our life without having a paper to enable us do it. Whether we like or not, we are living in a Paper Prison.
Do we know that we REALLY are in a Paper Prison? Are we imprisoned or we are here at our own free will? Or may be it is another case of A Stockholm Syndrome; were the captive beloved the captor. Do we REALLY want to leave the Paper Prison?

visit http://www.paperprison.org for updates and other commensts

Tags: business, document, management, paper, prison, process

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Comment by Solomon Kaminda on December 1, 2009 at 4:05pm: Your analogy of prison and the element of perception captures very well the case in many people's lives today. It is because of this fear that it many corporates are still hesitant in introducing an all-out policy on electronic records management. The management still has this fear that, someone somewhere e.g a tax official or a quality auditor is going to insist on the paper records for transactions carried out.
I see it in many other ways too. that, we are in our prisons due to ignorance of the situation. This ignorance feeds the fear you have mentioned in your article and the cycle goes unbroken. If the prisoners were well aware of the disabled electronic gadgets, they would discover pretty faster that the things were no longer harmful and hence free themselves from the prison they found themselves. Majority of those who do not want to adopt electronic records management are averse to electronic information processing. Even though they use it, they wish there was a way of avoiding it.
What these prisoners ought to understand is that ERM is here to stay. Paper is definitely on its way out. ERM is the way of futurists who see it as a way of avoiding the paper prison.

Comment by John "JR" Robinson on November 30, 2009 at 1:36pm: I think your metaphor is appropriate. But as in all prisons of the mind there will be those who will break free so long as the fear of the heart is not steadily evoke by those in charge.