A board can approve a data strategy without confronting a single difficult question about how its organisation is governed. The presentation can promise better insight, stronger controls and artificial intelligence, while leaving untouched the arrangements that allow unreliable information to become somebody else’s problem. The investment receives approval; the underlying distribution of power survives. From a director’s chair, that should be a reason to withhold applause.
I would begin with the decisions the business needs to improve. Which customers should it serve, where should it invest, what risks should it accept, and what evidence would change its course? A credible strategy connects those choices to the information required to make them. Without that connection, directors are being asked to fund capability before establishing its purpose, then accept activity as evidence of progress.
The harder examination concerns ownership. An executive may support better data until ownership requires funding remediation, surrendering a departmental definition or accepting scrutiny of a performance measure. At that point, the strategy encounters the organisation as it exists. Directors should pay attention to these disputes because they reveal whose priorities prevail when enterprise ambition collides with personal incentives. Agreement in principle tells a board little about commitment under pressure.
Consider two functions reporting different customer numbers. Resolving the discrepancy requires examining definitions, systems, responsibilities and the commercial consequences of choosing one interpretation. A platform cannot settle those questions on the board’s behalf. Someone must have the authority to resolve the disagreement, and someone must answer for the reliability of the resulting figure. Otherwise, the dashboard becomes a beautifully furnished room in which uncertainty has been given somewhere comfortable to sit.
Collective governance adds value when different perspectives improve a decision. It becomes an excuse when everyone participates but nobody owns the outcome. A director should expect each material decision to have an accountable executive, a recorded rationale, clear conditions and a route for escalation. Committees need enough authority to settle matters within their remit, while unresolved conflicts must reach someone empowered to decide. Attendance is a poor substitute for responsibility.
The board must also protect the quality of challenge. When risk, privacy or compliance colleagues identify weaknesses, management should remain responsible for addressing them. Asking the challenger to design, deliver and then assess the remedy can compromise the scrutiny directors depend upon. Collaboration remains essential, but the board should understand who proposes, who executes and who evaluates, especially when resources are scarce and deadlines make blurred responsibilities attractive.
Investment discipline matters here. Directors should ask what management will stop doing, which information will be corrected or retired, and which benefits have a baseline against which delivery can be judged. More records, dashboards and analytical tools can increase complexity without improving judgement. The uncomfortable leadership task is to withdraw support from work that carries prestige but cannot demonstrate a contribution to the organisation’s objectives. Sponsorship must include the willingness to disappoint.
Directors need humility about their own information. Board papers reflect choices about what to measure, aggregate and omit; confidence in the presenter cannot establish confidence in the evidence. I would want to understand material limitations, competing interpretations and the consequences of error. Management should be able to disclose uncertainty without fearing that candour will be punished. A board that rewards reassurance teaches the organisation how to conceal its doubts. That scrutiny should extend to the board, including whether directors have the knowledge and time to recognise answers that evade the question.
A data strategy therefore deserves approval when leadership can explain how authority, investment and accountability will change the business’s decisions. Directors should return to those commitments after the presentation has disappeared from the agenda and the consultants have left. Governance earns its value in that less glamorous period, when benefits must be evidenced, conflicts resolved and promises enforced. The final question is personal: when the information fails, which leader will stand behind the decision made with it?
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Michael Irene, CIPM, CIPP(E) certification, is a data and information governance practitioner based in London, United Kingdom. He is also a Fellow of Higher Education Academy, UK, and can be reached via moshoke@yahoo.com; twitter: @moshoke
