Active Data Governance Is Cultural Transformation in Motion…
Practical Data Governance….. Show me a cultural Transformation In Motion, and I'll tell you a governance adoption on its way to success…
Many organizations today profess to have embarked on a data governance journey. This reality lies in what you see on the ground in each organization. A governance adoption without an impact on the ground is a 'pretense governance' to keep up appearance.
Simply put, you're operating in theory and not in reality.
A Governed Data Environment is a transformed data environment evident in its people, processes, and technology Interaction. If your organization has embarked on a data governance adoption journey for over a year and you have little or nothing to show for it in your data culture. You're constantly asked the same question to justify the value-add of your governance adoption; this message is for you.
If you're one of the many organizations still struggling with justifying the 'why' of your data governance investment simply because your organization is yet to see some ROIs in your adoption journey. This might be a good time to assess where you're missing the mark.
One of the most critical and obvious metrics of a successful data governance adoption is cultural transformation.
Achieving a desired cultural transformation of data ethics and due diligence in the engagement and use of data is the most critical bedrock of any governed data environment.
What is Data Governance Cultural Transformation?
One of the uniqueness of Data Governance as a discipline is changing the endemic culture of poor treatment of data in our organizations to a culture where every data citizen's ultra-care of the data treatment as an asset takes center stage. This is the desired cultural transformation every organization must strive to achieve.
Most organizations have lived with poor data habits plaguing them for decades. This is simply not going away overnight unless the organization intentionally addresses this foundational problem. It has taken many decades to realize the importance of data treatment as an asset to better drive their business outcome.
The growing demand and appetite of our current global economy and digital age for trusted data as a critical driver for the competitive edge has taken many by surprise.
Many organizations continue to grapple with this reality to address their decade-long data issues. Unfortunately, many organizations are simply addressing their data issues with unsustainable and expensive bandage workaround to 'keep the light on' for their business operations.
Data Governance, to this end, is the only discipline positioned to address and change an organization's data culture with the transformation of people's mindset in their data engagement.
The cultural transformation addressed by governance is thus:
1) A mindset transformation around data recognition as a critical asset for the organization's relevance, edge, and survival.
2) Setting expectations around data engagement and treatment along the value chains.
3) Drawing awareness and understanding to all data roles and responsibilities.
4) Activating working policies, standards, and procedures around data treatment along its lifecycle (from creation to consumption and disposal).
Why Cultural Transformation?
Every organization today relies heavily on its data to thrive. Trusted data is the basic raw material for every industry and sector to drive their business operations and key decisions. i.e :
· For your data to be trusted, accountability and ethics must drive its creation, engagement, and consumption. Your people and your culture must be sensitized with this understanding and mindset shift.
· Cultural Transformation is the bedrock of a sustainable, trusted, and business-ready environment. The 'bandage culture' many have adopted over the years to help drive their business operation is simply failing to help achieve set out innovative business and regulatory missions in many of our current data initiatives. To this effect, a permanent, sustainable resolution to ungoverned data issues is needed to rescue many organizations in this predicament.
· Cultural transformation lowers your organization's data-fixes expense and is a considerable cost saving, value-add in a governed data environment.
Facts:
Your yearly expense on temporal fixes of data issues is automatically halved when you address your cultural ethics around data.
Your data issues never go away until the cultural transformation is set in motion in your organization.
Without a cultural transformation of people's mindset on data treatment, it is impossible to resolve quality issues, and your prevailing data challenges will continue to re-occur.
Cultural Transformation forces accountability and ownership around data health and ultimately drives your data maturity and business growth.
How Can You Accelerate Cultural Transformation in Your Data Governance Adoption?
Driving Cultural Transformation in any organization is a journey all data leaders must recognize. The key is to intentionally activate this from day one of your data governance adoption.
There are many ways you can start activating cultural transformation to show a quick win. The following are a few strategies you can put in place:
· Start with sensitizing your people around Data Literacy and Governance Adoption.
· Assess your competitive data demands to look for quick-win initiatives as your proof of concept
· Prioritize your governance execution order by business domain and communities and start with your best allies to showcase success.
· Identify and nominate data champions and allies from each data community to help advocate around the governance of their data.
· Equip and empower data roles for each data community for their assigned responsibilities.
· Formalize and recognize people assigned to different data roles and responsibilities.
· Incorporate yearly performance metrics to evaluate data roles.
To this end, if your organization is yet to activate and put governance in motion with cultural transformation. If your data governance adoption is still looking great on papers and policies without visible impact on the ground, the reality of the value-add will continue to be a black-box to your organization and your business sponsors.
Every data governance adoption journey must start with the cultural shift of optimizing your enterprise data with your data ethics. It must start from day one of your data governance adoption journey.
For more detail and practical help on how to help accelerate your governance journey with cultural transformation. Book a Free Call with me to discuss your challenges, and we can explore some practical strategies to actualize your data governance success.
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