Most organizations aspiring to be Hyper-Decisive® need to make a critical shift in their perception of governance, and view it as a strategically impactful capability, rather than a simple compliance-oriented activity. Organizations across all industries recognize that governance competencies play a key role in ensuring successful data and analytics investments that deliver business value. This perception stems in part from more IT and business leaders viewing critical data assets and analytics as strategic enablers of the business outcomes they seek. As such, data leaders, business intelligence (BI) teams, and executives in general now focus more on the value of these assets—and not just the degree to which their organizations protect the security and privacy of these assets.
The value of data and analytic assets arises not from security and privacy protections but instead comes from their quality, consistency, ability to be found and accessed—as well as the degree to which people in an organization know these data and analytic assets exist, and understand how they can be used to meet strategic goals. This broader view of governance represents a massive change in perceptions for many organizations. As a result, more organizations now make governance a top priority for high-level roles such as the chief data officer (CDO) and chief analytics officer (CAO), removing governance from its historical purview as a regulatory compliance function.
Organizations cannot realistically expect to completely change mindsets about governance among all their people. Instead, data leaders and their teams can most effectively implement change by analyzing where in the organization governance does (or does not) take place, and how this contributes to (or detracts from) strategic business outcomes. This transition needs to include a broader view of governance that goes beyond compliance and includes quality, lifecycle management, and modeling (metadata and definitions) of critical data and analytic assets. By targeting areas where a more strategic approach to governance can positively impact these goals, they can build a strong case to address governance needs in a more proactive, value-driven, and therefore effective manner.
As a first step in recasting governance as strategic and value-added (rather than just a compliance) activity, data leaders and their teams can identify and quantify where improvements in quality of data and analytic assets will deliver quantifiable returns. With data (and analytics) quality as a launching point, roles responsible for governance can show business leaders how improvements to data quality would directly contribute to their desired outcomes. From there, they can expand to other dimensions of governance beyond quality.
Data leaders and teams trying to make governance strategic and visible face the critical decision of determining where in the organization to place governance-focused roles. More of these roles need to reside close to the “points of action” where improved governance can bring value—that is, close where strategic decision making occurs within teams responsible for critical business processes. And the success of those roles and of governance itself increasingly gets judged via governance-related metrics that track quality, lifecycle, and other dimensions. This is how forward-looking organizations are reshaping governance as a strategic enabler of business value. In essence, they now play “offense,” instead of taking a purely defensive, compliance-driven posture toward governance.
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