Your ECM Standards Are Solid. Adoption Is Not (Part 1)

Standardization is one of the first major wins organizations achieve as they mature their ECM environment.

Policies get written. Naming conventions are agreed upon. Filing structures and metadata conventions are documented. Committees form. Departments are trained. Leadership can finally say, “We have governance.”

And that is real progress.

But mid ECM maturity has a hard truth hiding inside that progress:

Your ECM standards may be solid. Adoption often isn’t.

This is the most dangerous stage of maturity because it looks controlled.

Frameworks exist. Rules are published. Everyone agrees on the right way.

But day-to-day agency work is not governed by what’s written. It’s governed by what’s realistic.

The Mid-Maturity Trap: Governance Looks Stronger Than It Is

At this stage, governance is expressed primarily as structure:

• Standard naming conventions

• Standard folders

• Standard retention categories

• Standard “how we do it” guidance

In theory, that creates consistency.

In real agency operations, it often creates something else: local adaptation.

Because work is messy, fast, and deadline-driven.

Agency Reality: The Work Is Not Standard

In government, especially, departments operate with very different constraints.

Clerk’s Office

The Clerk’s Office tends to be a natural champion of governance: agenda workflows, official records, public access, defensibility. Standards usually fit well here because the work already prioritizes consistency.

Community Development / Planning

Planning workflows are inherently iterative: drafts, revisions, exhibits, markup cycles, public comments, and versions that matter. A rigid naming standard can become an obstacle rather than a support system.

So what happens?

• Staff store drafts outside the ECM to move faster

• They track revisions with side spreadsheets

• They use email threads as “version control”

HR

HR often has strong confidentiality expectations and a high-stakes lifecycle (recruitment → onboarding → performance → separation). If the ECM standard doesn’t reflect those lifecycles, staff create their own.

So what happens?

• HR keeps “working files” in private drives

• They upload only the final documents to ECM

• Metadata fields go unfilled because they slow processing

Finance

Finance work includes volume, deadlines, reconciliations, and external supporting documentation. If the ECM standard requires too many manual steps, it collides with the month-end reality.

So what happens?

• People batch-upload without metadata

• They build tracker spreadsheets

• Retention becomes “we’ll deal with it later”

The Fracture: “Standard” Doesn’t Mean “Scalable”

This is the core dissonance in mid-maturity:

Belief: Standardization guarantees consistency.Reality: Without flexibility, standards fracture in practice.

Departments don’t break standards because they reject governance.

They break standards because:

• The standards don’t match the workflow

• The standards demand too much manual effort

• The standards don’t account for exceptions

• The standards slow down service delivery

The Silent Consequence: False Confidence

This is the risk that sneaks in at mid-maturity.

Leadership sees standards and assumes:

• The filing is consistent

• Retention is applied

• Audit trails are complete

• Adoption is strong

But beneath the surface:

• Some teams use ECM fully

• Some use it partially

• Some use it as an archive only

• Some route around it daily

You end up with something that feels mature, but isn’t:

A governed system in theory, and multiple systems in practice.

And the worst part is that this stage creates compliance risk that is hard to see, because it hides behind documentation.

The Takeaway

Mid ECM maturity is not failure. It’s progress.

But it’s also the moment where agencies must recognize:

Standards do not create adoption. Systems do.

In Part 2, we’ll look at why “one size fits all” governance fails at scale and what mature agencies do differently: transparent governance and local flexibility within central guardrails.