Leadership, Management, Governance

Leadership for change

Management for effectiveness

Governance for stability

It is way too easy to become confused where these three functions are concerned. We like to think of ourselves as leaders when what actually consumes our time and attention is hitting deadlines and deliverables. Leaders emerge when change is in the air.

When the marketplace is shifting; when the economy is deteriorating and taking our profitability down with it; when we're no longer able to keep up--that's when leadership is required and leaders step forward. Anyone can steer a straight course through calm seas with good charts. It takes a master to sense the environmental factors, inspire confidence among the crew and make the continuous changes required to keep the ship from breaking up or running aground until things settle down and we get back into familiar waters. We risk disaster when leadership isn't acknowledged and permitted to assume control. When the crisis is over, we often find that the leader has little or no interest in the day-to-day operations of work rosters, schedules, performance reviews... The leader may make a very poor manager.

The manager is the master of routine. She is the one who keeps the machinery humming and the product going out the door. He makes sure that time boxes are hit, that deliverables are delivered and that budgets are created and followed. When the winds of change begin to blow, the manager who fails to recognize the need for leadership or believes in error that he can handle the leadership role can cause massive and sometimes irrecoverable damage before she agrees to [temporarily] relinquish the helm. Exceptional management defines the team, builds the team and keeps the team vision alive. This management is essential.

Governance is ubiquitous and invisible. Governance is observing, analyzing, formalizing, monitoring, measuring, improving. Governance establishes the standards to which managers hold themselves, each other and their teams accountable. It should be readily apparent that governance is every bit as necessary within a high-performance organization as is management. An exceptional governance function is a combination of historian, engineer and seer. A liberal dose of management is required to insure that governance doesn't degenerate into approval by the de facto expert.

The six sigma governance function will have incorporated leadership into the system of standards. A set of standards and standard processes may be of little use to the leader in the midst of the storm but may have helped to prepare that leader to be able to step forward.

Leadership for change, management for effectiveness, governance for stability is the tag line of WhiteLake Data Management. Data Management will be a microcosm of the enterprise as a whole. Every point of view (perspective) within the enterprise will be represented in Data Management. Virtually every process within the enterprise will be examined by Data Management in an attempt to "get it right." The risk associated with unreliable information (data) can only be assessed in light of the process(es)--and the personalities-- involved. Data Management is not governance but must include governance as an essential component. As its name implies, management is its bread and butter. Because it is frequently considered the homely step child, however, the availability of leadership may well be the key to its success.

Governance and Control

There seems to be some confusion in data governance circles concerning the application of governance--how to make it work. I sat through a tutorial at a recent conference in which the expert emphasized the need for authority as the key (or a key) to successful governance.


It was never clear to me what the scope of this authority was to be or how it was to be used. I finally asked the question, "Authority for what?" You may have heard that responsibility without authority is the recipe for stress and burnout. I thought to pursue this line of thinking as a way to discover what was meant by data governance. If I know the nature of the authority, I should be able to deduce the nature of the responsibility. The question never received an answer. What I got was blank looks.


I felt a strong need to get to the bottom of this since the word "enforce" or "enforcement" was also used several times. I was becoming extremely uncomfortable.


Friends, if people do not accept governance and cooperate with it, then the governance model needs to change. We do not need enforcers. We need arbiters, mediators and facilitators. More than anything else we need teachers. I've heard it said that we all do the best we know how and when we know better, we'll do better.


Controls and attempts to control do not work in governance. They only create bottlenecks and delays that encourage people to find other ways. In our local civil government, we call it red tape and bureaucracy. For example, building permits are required for many home improvements. The reasons for this requirement are excellent. The permit and the resulting inspections (audits) protect the current and future homeowner by insuring that the project is safe. In spite of the obvious benefits, many do-it-yourself homeowners avoid the permit process because the process is obscure, the standards must be discovered, it can be inconvenient, it adds to the cost and is known to produce delays. Furthermore, the only way for the scofflaw to be caught is through an inspection and the authority has no reason to inspect other than the permit. Note that contractors licensed by the authority are much more likely to comply.

Contrast this to the governance of traffic on roadways. Standards are clearly displayed, drivers must pass a licensing test demonstrating both physical capacity and knowledge. Law Enforcement (To Serve and Protect) is primarily tasked with monitoring compliance (which their mere presence guarantees). Compliance metrics are gathered via various kinds of technology and governance changes (to speed limits, traffic signals, etc.) are made based on these audits. What if we had a committee at each intersection with the sole authority to direct traffic?

As you can see, governance requires an initial framework (competence, licensure), a coherent set of standards (coherent in the sense of both understandable and integrated), and monitoring/audit capabilities. Anything else is extra and may even get in the way.

The result of good governance is a community that enjoys consistency, predictability and safety and is mostly free from nasty surprises. The authority that is present is passive and present only to deal with issues that don't fit within the governance structure. If authority is needed everywhere, there is no governance anywhere.

Governance in Context

Every time I talk with a group of people I come away more convinced that the lack of governance is the underlying reason for the "failure" of so many technology initiatives.

I have addressed two DAMA chapters this week and those in attendance included a CIO, managers, data and business architects, data modelers, warehouse analysts... I would guess the average age of the groups to be about 40 and they came to their current job roles for the most part via a technology path. They shared stories of corporate in-fighting, closed-mindedness and self-centeredness that have produced some incredibly poor decisions (or non-decisions). The general mood seemed to be resignation if not acceptance. They asked repeatedly what could have been done differently.

Data governance is on many minds today because of some horror stories involving costly mistakes that were avoidable (see Confessions of a Data Governance Sponsor). Anyone can find success if they find the right expert partner and if you are really committed to governance, that's what you'll do. The devil is, as always, in the details.

First of all, how is commitment generated? How does the commitment become focused on [data] governance? Finally, how can we envision and create something that is independent of individual champions (not built on a cult of personality)?

Imagine that we live in a nation without governance--the strongest or the most charismatic become "warlords", accumulating bands of adherents who follow orders and share in the spoils. Now imagine that we are somehow able, through commitment to a vision, sacrifice and patience, to create a system of governance in one city. Present day Afghanistan springs to mind as a real-life example. What will happen to the governance in the city if it can't be extended into the rest of the country?

Now imagine an example of a country with good governance in which a single city has resisted or expelled governance. Hollywood has produced many examples of this story.

Which scenario has the best chance of producing uniformly good governance?

One of the companies represented at one my presentations is a very modern one in which all employees are "team members" and much effort has clearly been spent to create a uniform image. The team members are proud of the identity that they share. At the same time, this companies refers to its business units as "pyramids." What message does this convey? I can think of few metaphors that indicate monolithic autonomy better than pyramid (unless perhaps "silo"). If I work in a terrain of pyramids and want to institute governance, I really have only one choice--to create governance within a single pyramid. This is analogous to creating governance in a single city of a lawless land.

Only the person responsible for all the pyramids could turn a commitment to governance into a common system of governance in all the pyramids. Of course, if we had an organization that had a presence in all of the pyramids, we could delegate the task of creating governance to them. They might even have a chance to succeed if everyone understood that their efforts had the blessing of the supreme leader.

I believe that data governance is somewhat analogous to streets governance or sewers governance. It is absolutely necessary for the community but doomed to fail unless the vision and commitment become widespread. Neighborhood Watch can go a long way toward eliminating unpleasant surprises within a community and one successful neighborhood watch will stimulate surrounding communities to emulate this "best practice." There is a real limit, though, on what a neighborhood watch can accomplish and many, independent and uncoordinated such efforts will provide many gaps through which unpleasantness will find its way.

A company that is unable or unwilling to do process management does not have a sufficient level of governance to support a data governance initiative. If standard processes are anathema, forget about data governance. There must be a level of maturity to set the stage for successful governance or there must be a universal system that indoctrinates new community members with governance principles and assigns and explains their role(s). Military organizations understand this. Our school systems understand this. Every corporation has new employee orientation programs, most of which contain no reference to standard process and the employee's responsibility to adhere to standards.

"We are a government of laws and not of men." except when we step into the corporate bubble. At that point, it is understood that we are to work for the approval of the boss.

Measuring Governance

I apologize. I said I would address this yesterday. We do have to get back to the guerrilla movement on the frontiers of the empire, but let's take a little time to look at measurement of governance.

First, let's agree that data governance is like any other governance except that it focuses on data. A governance program directed at process or at competency or whatever, would have the same characteristics? OK, I'll attempt a justification for that statement.

What do we ask of a data governance process? What are the objectives? By the way, I use the term process here in the sense of a set of activities that are ongoing and have a consistent purpose. The purpose of the data governance process is to:

Optimize the value of the data resource by insuring that the capture, storage, retrieval, destruction and use of the resource is done in accordance with established policy, procedure and standards.

Do you buy it? If not, I'd be pleased to discuss alternative purposes, but the remainder of this discussion is based on this purpose.

Based on the purpose of data governance then, several perspectives on measurement suggest themselves. The most obvious one is the QA (quality assurance) perspective. How are we doing at following established standards? It is tempting to count the number of standards, policies and procedures because counting is easy to do and there is a tendency among the governors to equate many laws with good government. Strangely enough, among the governed the emphasis is on the quality of the laws rather than their quantity. A small number of effective and easily understood standards may deliver more benefit than a larger number of over-specialized or esoteric ones.

The most effective measurement will be part of the standard or process itself, but some organizations may find it useful in getting governance going, to do retrospective analysis to see how well/consistently processes are being applied. Health care makes extensive use of the "chart review" to gather this kind of data retrospectively. Measurement intrinsic to the process or standard has the potential to be much more nuanced and useful than that done retrospectively simply because all of the context is available.

Clearly, though, the nature of the metric(s) is very much determined by the process or standard itself. For this reason, it makes no sense to discuss metrics or KPIs (key process indicators), a special kind of metric, without first establishing the process context.

Other perspectives might differntiate among standard, process, and policy or might measure in conjunction with the data life cycle, specific subject areas or specific usages.

One last point, should you be tempted to think in terms of measuring accountability.

Accountability in the absence of a standard is really approval.

No governance mechanism can exist for long based on approval. Each change in "leadership" will create massive turmoil as everyone seeks to reorient to a new approval model.