Mastering Data Governance is an Illusion

There’s a direct conflict between mastering data governance and running a great company. Companies hire people who can approach problems in new ways. Many new hires are made because companies want to look at things differently, especially in leadership roles.

Data governance helps a company gain better control over its data assets. This is done by increasing the consistency of data and metrics, increasing operational effectiveness when working with data, as well as some other data related processes.

Improving data governance will make a company better. It will also create restriction.

Imagine telling newly hired leaders that they need to follow all of the existing rules that are in place related to data. This isn’t realistic. It can be successfully managed for awhile, but eventually, leaders will implement an idea that’s different than how the company currently operates. After all, that’s why they were hired.

A common example of this is adjusting a company metric, or adding a new one entirely. When this happens, the people who report to those leaders will follow. Not many people want to rock the boat with leadership.

There’s a lot of good that will come out of this. New insights, innovations, and fresh perspectives will propel a company forward. However, it’s important to know that data governance will take a step backwards. The operational efficiency will slow down, and the work to reconcile data discrepancies will increase. The more influence a leader has, the more this process to be managed. Teams can get better at managing this data governance process, but they will never master it.

Ideas for improving this data governance cycle

1. Companies should establish how much time is spent doing re-work and reconciling data discrepancies each month. This should be tracked by business function as well. When this type of work starts to consume more time, look at leadership hires in those functions and how far back they were. This will give you an idea of how long new ideas start to impact data governance.
2. Potential new hires are often asked how they’ve looked at metrics/would like to look at metrics while interviewing. Start tracking this data, maybe even as early as on the application. Send the data to whoever is responsible for data governance, and for those hired, set up a meeting early on in their tenure. This will allow the company to be proactive. Embrace looking at data in new ways, but have it be in a controlled environment. The cost of re-work is much greater than the cost of a new experiment.

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