Monday, January 9, 2012

Good enough i-Governance


Some people call it data, some call it information. Some talk about structured vs. unstructured, and some say the difference is about the context. Some people call them fields, some call the business terms... We really need not care what it's called - but rather how it is managed.

There is no dispute that the communication needs between two workers is the fundamental necessity of succeeding in a collaborative effort. From conversations, to legal contracts, to database fields used to feed reports that influence decision making.

Information Governance, data governance, enterprise information management. Are they the same? It depends who you ask!

Now that we got this out of the way, I would like to talk about good enough i-Governance. If you are a parent, you might have heard the term "good enough parenting". This basically means, that despite all your good intentions, you will never be able to be "the perfect parent". You have certain ability to control your circumstances - but there are aspects which you will never be able to control. Being a "good enough parent" is really about trying your best and achieving reasonable results.

In i-Governance, we have the same problem. For me the scope for i-Governance is about the business end result. What is the impact of the communication between knowledge workers, and how can we optimize this communication for the business.

There are a few dimensions that we need to consider: business strategy, budgets /resources, maturity, awareness and capability (skills and technologies).

Depending on your personal family (I mean business) situation, you need to work with / around / against the reality which you are facing. Chances are, you cannot cast a magic spell and move everything into the right place in one stroke. It is a journey. When you raise a child, it takes years of teaching and a lot of patience to instill the right values and behavior. With changing the mind set and behavior within an organization - the same applies. This in all, is not impossible. However, what is rather more challenging is steering and maintaining the direction throughout the turmoil of realities that your business needs to work through.

So my advice is:  apply "good enough i-governance". Keep your eyes on the goal, be patient and persevere. Listen to good advice and make sure you prioritize early value creation.