Byrne Tony Byrne

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Ten reasons why governance is like sex

7-May-2010

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software, Portals and Content Integration, SharePoint Ecosystem, Web Content Management, Governance, Implementation, Industry Events, Intranets

At this week's J Boye conference in Philadelphia, I joined a panel reviewing some of the "hot topics" from the event. As you might expect at a gathering of web and intranet managers, the issue of governance kept recurring.

We could debate what governance means -- I define it as consistent structures and processes for making effective decisions -- but everyone agrees governance is critical to long-term success.

I don't claim to be an expert on website and IT governance, but after a couple decades of helping people make technology decisions, I'll boil down my thoughts on the topic to one simile:

Governance is like sex.

  • People tend to talk about it more than they do it, and...
  • ...Most people don't do it as much as they'd like
  • At least one key player needs to really want it or it will never get started
  • There are many different ways to do it satisfactorily
  • It's more art than science
  • It's more successful in environments characterized by mutual trust
  • Other people can give you a lot of good advice, but only you can make it happen
  • You may not get it right at first, but that shouldn't stop you from trying
  • A shared sense of fairness encourages repeatability
  • In the end, bad governance is better than no governance at all

So hopefully at least by now you're smiling. If you have any particular (but not X-rated!) governance success stories you'd like to share, please chime in via the comments below.

(P.S.: I'll be touching a little bit more on web governance in my May 11 webinar, "How Do You Know If It's Time for a New Web CMS?")

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