Whose Job Is It, Anyway?

There are several reasons why you are reading this blog post. Leaving out all the self-aggrandizing ones, let's focus on those who actually have the title question in their minds. You may have been drawn here by an interest in BI (business intelligence), the latest name for "reporting." It is likely that you have had some bad experiences involving reports or dashboards, or mash-ups or some other information display/access effort.

You spent what seemed like way too much time getting to an understanding of

• how this this was to be used
• the kind(s) of content that would be useful/acceptable
• how the information should be arranged/displayed

If you are part of a really accomplished organization, you may also have had seemingly endless discussions concerning

• How "bad" data would be recognized
• How "bad" data would be handled
• Remediation or cleansing processes to reduce the incidence of "bad" data

And, finally, if your organization is in the six-sigma population

• What is "bad" or poor quality data?
• Where does it come from?
• What does it cost?
• Where should we devote our efforts?
• What kinds of efforts offer the greatest ROI?

If you follow the various discussion forums concerning data quality, you will find one question popping up with regularity: "Who is responsible for Data Quality?" I asked myself why the question is asked. What prompts the question? It seems not to matter whether the organization has a reputation for quality, nor whether it has a history with data quality, nor whether the questioner is experienced or inexperienced, executive, manager, or front-line production. Why?

Having talked with some of these folks and researched the situations of several others and then simply meditated on this over an extended period of time, I have come up with a few likely scenarios.

1. The questioner knows the answer but either wants validation or a sufficient number of the "right" answer from people who are likely to be respected.
2. The questioner has encountered roadblocks from unexpected directions and is dealing with surprise and disappointment.
3. The questioner is curious about what others are doing.

What I have NOT seen is any evidence that the questioner is sincerely trying to determine how best to attack the problem of poor data quality. It would be easy to assume from these same discussion forums and conversations, that nearly everyone knows what they're doing and has either solved the problem or is well on their way to a solution. When we learn enough about human nature we understand that these people are all feeding their egos (or rather that their egos are feeding themselves since much of this is unconscious) and that they are taking an incidence of limited or small-scale success and projecting it into an eventual enterprise level solution. I have done this myself.

I know this--that data quality, or any other variety of quality for that matter, will not bend to advanced degrees, nor to mastery of data and information design concepts, nor to any product or set of products, nor to any effort by marketers, nor even to the best-designed procedures, methods, governance structures, architectures...

The ONLY way to data quality lies through the hearts and minds of each and every person in your organization. Each of them has the power to subvert any plan, procedure or method; to render ineffective any tool or product; and to humble the greatest of egos.

The bottom line is that it must be everyone's job but of course that isn't a satisfying answer because the very short list of things that everyone believes are important includes things like breathing, eating, elimination of wastes, procreation, maybe community, relationship, acknowledgement... This list of universally agreed-upon important things will never spontaneously include data quality. In fact, if a poll were conducted in the boardroom, it is unlikely that data quality would appear on the list of things important to the company.

Don't misunderstand--the quality, security and accessibility of your data assets is at least as important to the continued health and well-being of your company as that of your capital assets. The problem lies in the fact that data isn't real and tangible. If bad data smelled bad or rusted or developed crumbling holes, or if it resigned and went elsewhere where it was more appreciated or was subjected to audits by outside entities, or showed up on a P&L or balance sheet where it was reviewed by prospective data contributors--THEN it might get some attention.

It is true that anyone can produce an example of data but virtually no one--even those responsible for collecting and storing its instances--will understand that data is something other than what they are holding or pointing to or storing. But I digress.

If we can't accept the answer that data quality is everyone's job then we need to move on to identify the person or corporate function who will be accountable for the quality of the company's data. It's not possible here to put a name to this accountable party. What we can do, though is itemize some of the skills and abilities required to help point the way to your unique name.

First and most important, let's agree that what we are talking about here is cultural change and cultural change, more than any other kind of change, requires leadership. Already we see that a corporate function can never be accountable although you can tape a job title on the person's door when you identify him/her. This leader will be able to move freely across the company and will be able to give everyone the feeling that they have been heard. This DQL (data quality leader) will be conversant with principles and practices of quality improvement. The DQL must be completely comfortable with the nature of data and will not be confused by the display of samples. Attributes of the data asset as a whole will be the focus of all of the DQL's efforts. S/he may well choose to shine the spotlight on a segment of the population and may delegate someone more familiar with that segment to assume the leadership of this effort. That surrogate DQL will also deal only with population attributes (metrics).

The DQL will never fall into the trap of confusing examples with anything else. An example may be representative or it may be an anomaly. Only the population metrics allow us to tell the difference.

Further attempts at guiding your choice may be counter-productive if you begin to feel manipulated or otherwise used.

A final caution concerns those characteristics that will render a person unsuitable. Just as you might wonder about a carpenter who feels compelled to talk interminably about his hammer or his saw, the person who leads with the name of a tool, tool vendor, methodology, author, book, etc., is unlikely to be the one you're looking for. The last thing that the leader/agent of cultural change needs is to divert any attention away from the primary focus. Products and tools may be useful for producing the population metrics discussed above, but beyond that should be well in the background and completely invisible to the majority of those you are attempting to influence.

Those who confuse files or [mega/tera]bytes with data are likewise unsuitable as are those who confuse a spreadsheet, chart or report with data.

I hope I haven't made it seem like an impossibility. Talk with people about this and over time you'll begin to get a feel for what to look for and what to avoid.

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.

Business, Information and Technology

Are you in management? Do you have annual/quarterly goals? Will you be held accountable for achieving those goals? Is the accountability expressed in bonus dollars? Is there any possibility of a zero bonus?

Are you still with me?

How will the achievement of your goal(s) be measured? Please note here that "how" has two dimensions: one is related to process and the other to a unit of measure. In all of my vast personal experience, all of the attention has been focused on the unit of measure part (when there has been any attention at all), and the process part has never even been part of the conversation.

Please understand that what follows is not intended to sling mud at any individual or organization. My purpose is to clear the air so that we can talk about how we're really going to achieve our goal(s).

I am going to generalize based on extensive, though anecdotal, experience. In other words, I have not conducted a survey, scientific or otherwise, and cannot produce data to back up anything I'm about to say here, so I'm leaving it up to you, the reader to determine whether it feels like truth or not. Should you feel that this does not ring true, or should you wish to fault me for not being more objective, I would ask that you produce a study or at least a body of experience in support of your position.

Awards of bonus dollars tied to achievement are based solely on whether the holder of the dollars wishes to give them away or not. There is rarely, if ever, any protocol defined for defining metrics, units of measure or measurement process. You will go into an "annual assessment" meeting with your boss and he or she may discuss your level of achievement in very general terms before announcing the amount of your bonus or a recommendation for an increased level of compensation.

Why is this important, you ask? Well, it is important because it's the the way things are done. Despite vigorous protests to the contrary, the business world is set up to run on subjective assessment supporting subjective decisions. What, you say that your decisions are "data-driven" (objective)? I would love to hear the story behind the data that was used to arrive at your most recent decision.

All of this is background for understanding why "data" initiatives so frequently become mired in a swamp of politics and personality. Let's walk back from a data-driven decision.

1. You are able to make the decision because you trust the data.
2. You trust the data because you are familiar with and trust its source.
3. You trust the source because you know that it is reliable.
4. You know that it is reliable because it consistently produces information that can be relied upon.
5. The source has been consistent because it always uses a tried and true methodology (set of processes) to produce its product.
6. The consistency is possible because the methodology includes steps designed to validate the source's inputs.
7. The validation decision returns us to #1.

How do you feel about standards (e.g., standard operating procedure or SOP)? If you don't currently support the creation, implementation auditable use of standards or, at any time in the past have not done so, you have no right to and almost certainly do not have access to reliable information and therefore no claim to data-driven decisions. Just to drive the point home, when your boss decides that you won't be getting that bonus or increase you were counting on, your only acceptable response is to smile and say thank you.

By the way, if you notice that your bank account (or budget) is suddenly much bigger (or smaller) than it was yesterday, what is your responsibility? Who are you accountable to? How much trust can you afford? Now you have some insight into compliance.

The use of technology introduces an additional huge portion of uncertainty into the trust equation. Take another look at the decision walk-back above and note the points where the use of technology means adding additional paths and complexity to the validation process. This is what your data governance people are trying to get their arms around.

To summarize:

• data-driven or intelligence-driven decisions demand trust
• trust demands reliability
• reliability demands consistency
• consistency demands compliance
• compliance demands governance

OK, you can go back to work now.

Managing Technology and People

The thing about management is that it works great for money, time or countable things, but management of complex, uncountable things is at best a dream. You say "people are countable" and I'll agree, but only to the extent that the management is about bodies (head count).

Technology and its applications are so complex as to be unmanageable. Edsger Dijkstra spent much of his career trying to get that message across to the business world and the budding computer industry. Today, he is remembered more for optimized search algorithms. If that isn't the industry in a nutshell...

Many years ago I tried to tell people that technology must be controlled, not managed. My slogan was "control technology or it will control you." We are so in love with the notion of management and have so much antipathy for control, that this message, like Dijkstra's, falls on deaf ears. I am not, in any way, comparing myself to Dijkstra. I am comparing his "audience" to mine. Today, the tag line on my web site (www.m2dxtx.com) is "Leadership for change, Management for effectiveness, Governance for stability." The three are not mutually exclusive but the probability of finding all three in one person is quite small.

Control is not a bad thing--it is an essential thing. Automobile travel without control would involve so much risk that no reasonable person would attempt it. The control starts with the design and production of the machinery itself. An automobile is designed to be controlled. It is also designed to function within a larger system of controls. Awareness of this allows the designers to prioritize their efforts and focus on differentiators suggested by the system rather than on mere "performance" factors. For example, it would be a waste of time designing a vehicle for mass production that could negotiate a 90-degree turn at 80 mph. The system of controls insures that this level of performance is unnecessary.

Use of technology without controls is also fraught with risk. We require control over the design and production of technology to insure that the product is useful and usable within the larger control framework that is our business context. Control over the use of technology is needed to insure reliability and safety for all just as our traffic laws and their enforcement produce a sense of safety and predictability for those of us on public roads.

Because no one likes the idea of control, we are calling this "governance" but make no mistake, governance must be about controls or any effort is wasted. People want and need consistency. Consistency produces contentment and the role of government, according to SunTzu (The Art of War) is a contented populace.

So, if by management, you mean counting (or accounting), you won't have success applying it to personalities or to technology. If, by management, you mean coercion, you can, for a brief time, deliver the appearance of consistency and contentment with personalities or technology, but you will only be masking a growing problem. If, by management, you mean a system of controls (governance) that produces consistency, predictability and reduced risk, only then will you be able to say that your technology (and your people) are being managed.

Fortunately, the controls necessary for effective implementation and application of technology are well understood (if largely ignored). The Software Engineering Institute's CMMI and ITIL are but two specifications for a system of controls. These are thorough and consistent and understanding them will enable you to create a system tailored to your organizational needs.
The future starts when "control" is accepted and welcomed.

Winning the World Series

How do you win the World Series? Implementing good [data] governance is a lot like winning the championship, whether World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, US Open... It's a big goal accomplished through thousands of smaller ones. It's also similar to achieving Level 5 on the CMMI.
Let's take a look at how to win the World Series and see if we can learn anything about how to implement governance.
The first thing to recognize is that it takes an entire season--it isn't done in only a couple of weeks in October.
It takes the cooperative efforts of an entire organization.
Management must find and hire the right set of talents and abilities.
Coaches must turn the collection of talents and abilities into a team.
Each person must have the desire to excel as a part of a team.
Each person must come to share the vision of Winning The World Series.
Leadership must emerge to keep the vision in front of everyone.
We must win today's game (over and over again).
I must become a baserunner (if a batter) or keep the batter from becoming a baserunner (if in the field). I recognize that I won't succeed all the time but that doesn't keep me from wanting to succeed every time. Winning today's game means winning more of these smaller contests than I lose.
In order to win the small contests, I am prepared. I practice, I consult coaches, I talk with my teammates. I cultivate the knowledge as well as the abilities required.
I choose equipment that fits my needs.
I learn to win the contests in my own environment and in foreign environments.
I cultivate personal and team consistency.
When all of these things are done consistently and well, we find ourselves with at least the opportunity to win the World Series when October finally arrives.
What jumps out at me in all of this is the need for planning, preparation, patience, desire and commitment. I'm sure that no one out there believes that a governance implementation can be launched and completed in a few weeks. How long do you think it should take? Months? Years? Decades? Since their is no finite season or schedule to constrain us, maybe the best answer is that it will take as long as it takes.
That said, it seems incumbent on us to decide how we'll know when we have completed the task we have set for ourselves. I realize this seems self-evident and trivial but as I visit with people and groups I have developed the impression that the stable state is still undefined. What that means is that we are eternally implementing when we should be improving.
In the absence of another definition of the stable state, I have offered two principles for that state:

1. No [data] pollution and
2. No nasty surprises

Since these represent a whole series of contests, each of which we are committed to winning, while understanding that we won't win them all, another important property of the stable state is that it embody learning and self-modification (improvement). When we have created the property and the principles, we will have "won the world series". The next step is to understand the contests that make up "today's game" and equip ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally to win those contests.

Today's problem is that we are losing contests that we don't even know we're involved in. There's an old poker adage that says "If you look around the table and don't recognize the sucker--it's you." In [data] governance terms, if we look around and don't see the loser--it's us.

Healthcare: More on I.T. Capabilities

I realize the need to be a bit more specific with respect to capabilities. I have seen a virtually unbroken string of capabilities discussed that related to the practice of medicine or the business of healthcare delivery, but in almost fifteen years of experience in healthcare I.T., I have yet to see a capability goal that is about I.T.

An example may help. Suppose you are the city planner. You could take one of two approaches.

1. You could develop a comprehensive plan for the city that takes into account various expansion directions and encourages some while discouraging others. The plan would include both residential and business expansion.
2. You could attempt to satisfy each request that comes before you. You could allow various developers and politicians to set the agenda for the next six months and continuously play one against the other for priority.

In the second approach, a deft manipulator can get by for quite a while. The city, on the other hand, will always be in turmoil and unable to staff its various departments effectively. Budget dollars will go to the current top project(s) at the time of the budget approval process. But, because project priority will be ever changing with the political situation, those projects may start and then go into hibernation. Workers with specific skill sets will find themselves with little to do while the new high priority project has tough going because there is no money to bring in the right skills. Equipment winds up sitting in a warehouse or worked far beyond recommended maintenance cycles.

In the first approach, remarkably modest effort goes into an expansion model. Productive and non-productive alternatives emerge. The productive ones are fleshed out and the unproductive are set aside for contingencies. Potential streets, sewers (storm and sanitary), gas, electric, phone, Internet, and other necessary utilities are blocked in. Alternatives and contingencies are identified and capacities are established. With all of this in place, it is now relatively simple to budget for the next year's projects and all will be well as long as we don't cave into to political expediency and begin to allow projects outside the scope of the plan.

There is no problem as long as all negotiation goes on in broad daylight. If a particular out-of-scope project has popular appeal, it will be a simple matter to say, "OK, here's what it will mean for our other projects, for our long term plan and for the budget. If it's still popular, we do it.

Back to I.T. capabilities; server capacity, mass storage capacity, network bandwidth and access points, space, cooling—these are all obvious capacity planning considerations and for that reason they are at least on the radar for everyone. More subtle but no less important considerations include the architectures (technology, network, data, and communications) that we want to have, skills required as we work within the architectures and, not least, the standards architecture that will be the governance glue that holds everything else together.

Depending on your own experience as a technology worker (rather than as a manager), you may not have a "feel" for the people, skills, and experience that will be required, nor even for the implications of various architectures. Again, this is no place to guess. Get your direct reports together. If they don't seem sure or can't tell a story that is meaningful to you, then get some outside advice. The skills and attitudes required for a successful SOA (service-oriented architecture) are much different from those needed in a more "traditional" approach.

If you intend to rely on vendors for everything, you will still need to be able to tell which vendors fit into your architecture and which don't. They will tell you that they are "architecture-agnostic" or that they can fit into any architecture--don't believe it. Know about the characteristics of things that will fit and things that won't. Attempting to force-fit something that doesn't belong is the quickest way to throw everything you've built into turmoil.

If you're uncomfortable, I apologize for being so open. The answer to getting comfortable isn't avoidance, though, it lies in making a concerted effort to bootstrap yourself. No budget, no resource plan, no allocation discussion--management of one thing is not the same as management of anything. Technology is to big, too complex, too fast-moving to be brought into line by the classic "cost management and allocation of resources" approach. It needs a team approach because there's just too much for one person to know.

Do what you're able to do and know what your boundaries are. Be honest with yourself first of all and with your peers, reports and management. You may wonder if you are the only one at times, but it is not possible to manage technology without honesty. Unlike people, technology can't be coerced or manipulated.

Why Management Isn't Enough

If you've been reading this series from the beginning, you may have noticed that, as of now, there has been no mention of that traditional management responsibility, resource allocation. To review, we started by listing four critical characteristics of business intelligence

• meaning (semantic) understood
• applicability (use/utility) understood
• currency (timeliness) understood
• source/lineage/pedigree understood

Clearly, none of these is about allocation of resources. Just as clearly, resources will have to be allocated to create and maintain those characteristics. The point is that management skills do not come into play until the organization has decided that business intelligence is a capability it must have.

Prior to this, we have also discussed three distinct functions that are typically thrown together in the basket labelled "management." They are

• Leadership: moving an organization in the best direction by motivating change
• Management: making the organization effective by managing costs and productivity
• Governance: keeping the organization's productivity high by ensuring consistency and stability

Creating, developing and maintaining the four essential characteristics of business intelligence is going to demand all three of these functions. Leadership will be required to define and effect necessary changes. People accustomed to doing their job as they see fit, may need help in adjusting from that paradigm to one of "best for the organization." In many cases, managers have interpreted "organization" to mean the group for which I am responsible. They will need some leadership to make the adjustment to thinking of the the good of the organization as a whole. The scope of organization will vary depending on the process under discussion.

By now, you may be entertaining doubts. The doubts may center on the organization's ability to carry this off. They may concern whether the right people, experience, skill sets are available. They may also be about whether this business intelligence thing is worth the effort. I can't answer any of those doubts for you, but I can say, without equivocation, that getting to business intelligence is going to demand change and that the change will demand strong and consistent leadership.

The people within an organization are fully capable of governing themselves. Indeed, the United States of America is founded on that premise. We are "a government of laws and not of men" said John Adams. In the corporate world, laws are known as standards. Employees representing various business functions and sub-functions will be the best ones to define the standards that they will follow as long as leaders keep before them the corporate interest. There is a long history of failed attempts to impose standards on people, including those by King George V that resulted in the American Revolution. There is no need to repeat those failures.

Once the standards have been defined and agreed to by those affected, and once they have been reviewed for costs and efficiency by the managers, then what remains is to establish the equivalent of legislative subcommittees to monitor their consistent use and consult with the parties when the standards must be improved or abandoned. The cost lies in the change that produces the standards, not in the governance of the standards. In fact, many organizations already have a function dedicated to the monitoring of standards application. Quality Assurance has frequently been given a bad name because it is charged with creation of the standards as well as their monitoring.

Do you want business intelligence? Do you need current, unambiguous, actionable information with provenance, or can you be satisfied with really cool charts and graphs in three (or more) dimensions and lots of colors? You will have to decide.

Oxymorons in Abundance (part 3)

Yesterday I stated that governance already exists and we ignore it to the detriment of all. A bit more discussion on this will be helpful.

Back to the frontier first. A settler had the problem of governing the household. There isn't much that need be said about that since we still deal with that issue today and probably in much the same ways. When a settler (at the boundaries of the empire) encountered others like him/her, they had to come up with ways to govern those relationships. I'm not going to go into those mechanisms here--cultural anthropologists have published a lot of theory and case studies about this process. I will say that whatever was negotiated fell into one of two broad categories:

1. One party was clearly dominant and dictated the terms


2. The parties created a contract that was seen as mutually beneficial.

Even in the cases of mutually beneficial agreements, there is often a competitive aspect. One of the parties will think, "Well, I had to agree to this but I'm going to stick to the letter of the agreement and if they think I'm going to go out of my way to make their lives easier, they'd better think again."

Fast forward to our modern equivalent. It's easy to see that, at the boundaries of our corporate empire, where the other party is the source of revenue (client or customer) this is counter-productive and a sure path to failure. It isn't quite as easy to see that the same holds true at organizational boundaries and, most importantly, process boundaries. Because of the way businesses operate culturally, each employee is competing with every other employee in the same way that settlers at the frontier were often forced to compete with each other.

The result (Dr. W. Edwards Deming exposed this very effectively) is sub-optimal performance for the process, organization and empire. We can hear this any time we choose to listen. "I know that data is incomplete, but I don't have time. They're the ones who need it--let them clean it up." "Yes, it's wrong but it's what they asked for. They're the ones who will have to do it over."

So here is the role of a governance program. Governance exists, but its goals are not those of the process, organization, empire. In order to replace naturally occurring, organic governance with governance that is aligned with the corporate vision and carefully designed to further the strategies and goals of that vision, the organic governance structures, including the attitudes that created them, must be identified and understood. Then they must be replaced with equally effective structures.

Are you familiar with the idea of a cow path? This picture shows cow paths--no, not the broad "road" that the cows are on--the cow paths are those faint lines that meander across the fall line of the hill. Why are there so many? The cows have their reasons but they aren't talking. Those paths are like the organic governance in your organization. You've heard the expression paving the cow paths, which is not considered a good thing to do.

I'll leave you with a final thought. Is redesigning the cow paths a productive effort? The answer is that it may be and it depends on the objectives, BUT if there is no way to train the cows to use the new 21st century solution, then even the best vision, strategy and goals will be for nought.

Oxymorons in Abundance (continued)

Leadership is about Change.
Management is about Effectiveness and Efficiency.
Governance is about Consistency and Stability.

The discipline of Change Management is well worth our time. It consists of theory and practice involved in getting a change implemented. http://www.m2dxtx.com/images/Change_Components.gif makes an excellent reference whether you are a Manager, Governor or Leader. In everyday life, we can find ourselves in situations where there is an atmosphere of confusion around some initiative. As the chart directs, this is evidence that the vision driving the change has not been communicated well enough. In other words, the effort still needs leadership.

If the general mood is one of frustration, then this is where the manager must step in to make certain that sufficient resources are available.

To understand the role of Governance better, let's examine the life of a guerrilla movement such as the early days of our own American Revolution. The various colonies existed under charter from the King of England--not unlike departments in any corporation. As far as the Leadership was concerned, the colonies' purpose (the vision) was to produce wealth to allow expansion of the empire. The colonies were OK with that since they were able to keep a portion of the wealth for themselves.

The Leadership had placed Governors in each of the colonies to make sure that everything functioned well and that the colonist/workers could and did focus on their production. Leaders like to be able to rely on their empire to generate wealth consistently and predictably. The problem was that the Leaders and the Governors were out of touch with life at the boundaries. Governance attenuated pretty rapidly as you moved westward, away from the seaport communication links and seats of governance.

It was hard to focus on making the leaders wealthier when you had to worry about coming back from a hard day in the fields to find your home burned down and your family gone. Even a relatively small thing like an illness meant that you might have to cease all "normal" activities in favor of ministering to the ill or traveling days to either bring the ill to a physician or the physician to the ill.

In all of this people learned to manage their own situation. In so doing, they developed their own leadership and governance skills and processes. They learned to manage the processes and assessed their effectiveness by the stability they delivered. Ineffective processes were modified or abandoned.

The lesson here is that there is little need for governance in the boardroom. Governance is most valuable at the boundaries, where control is weakest. If there is no stability, no consistency and no predictability at the boundaries, then there is no governance. If Leaders attempt to hold Managers and "official" Governors accountable for something that doesn't exist, they will find themselves more and more out of touch as the accountable individuals scramble to create evidence that they are being effective.

What is data governance accountable for? What do we measure? What are the goals? What are the trends? Is business intelligence defined for data governance? Do we have data governance?

Tomorrow: Measuring Data Governance