Data Governance Principle #2: “Credibility Matters”
Posted by 
Share this Post
On my last few blog posts, I’ve been describing some principles for successful data governance, based on an application of the W.I.N, or “What’s Important Now?” philosophy from Lou Holtz, College Football Hall of Famer. I’ve also been making an effort to live out Lou’s philosophy in my business and professional life.
In my previous posts, I outlined three principles for data governance that constitute a business and political strategy that supports data governance in your organization. Those three principles are: 1) “Win Early”, 2) “Credibility Matters” and 3) “Walk, Don’t Run”.
Today, I want to talk about the second principle, “Credibility Matters”. That may seem like stating the obvious. In business, as in life, of course credibility matters! So, why is individual and organizational credibility exceptionally valuable when making data governance decisions?
I think there are three factors in data governance that make your individual (and your team’s) professional credibility especially important in influencing the organization’s overall direction:
1. Data Governance is new – Lots of people are casting about for information about data governance. This vacuum of credible sources and reliable guidance has created a cottage industry of leading lights weighing in on the subject, such as Steve Sarsfield, David Loshin, Ken O’Conner, Dan Power, Jill Dyche and others.
No one has yet written The Book on Data Governance. (Well, maybe Steve has.) And the principles and directives espoused by these very, very smart people, frankly, has yet to be backed up with a catalog of real business success.
2. Best practices for data governance are evolving – When you’re gearing up to do your umpteenth ERP implementation, you pretty much know what you’re getting into. You send out to your local Big-5 consultancy, even get a fixed bid. Try getting a fixed bid for a data governance engagement!
Rather than a single engagement, data governance entails a series of initiatives, each with technology, services and consulting costs that are difficult to estimate.
The lack of program definition, unknown inputs and outcomes that come with being an early adopter, all add up to one thing: business risk that makes your executive stakeholders nervous about tackling even modest data governance issues.
3. Lots of constituencies are involved – Any meaningful data governance strategy impacts multiple business groups, affecting roles from the top to the bottom of organizational structures. And there’s a lot at stake for each everyone involved.
Each group maintains its own base of trusted business data, its own reference sources. This data in turn prescribes deeply embedded business processes for synthesizing, and operating on, that data.
A data governance strategy that correlates and reconciles that data across these groups will inevitably involve some winners, and some losers. So, these groups are all effectively competing to influence the direction of that strategy.
Finally, what’s that old adage about opinions? Oh yeah, “everybody has one.”
Credibility is instrumental to influencing data governance strategy; how do you get more of it? Next week I’ll highlight how three Initiate customers and partners are building credibility through success.
This post is part of a series, Data Governance: "What's Important Now?"
1 Responses »
Trackbacks
Leave a Response
Entries(RSS)