by Angela Guess
Jim Harris has re-examined the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in terms of data governance. He writes that the adage is “a common defense of the status quo, which often encourages an environment that stifles innovation and the acceptance of new ideas. The status quo is like staying in the same familiar and comfortable room and choosing to keep all four of its doors closed. The change management efforts of data governance often don’t talk about opening one of those existing doors. Instead, they often broadcast the counter-productive message that ‘everything is so broken, we can’t fix it.’ We need to destroy our existing house and rebuild it from scratch with brand new rooms – and probably with one of those open floor plans without any doors.”
Harris adds, “Should it really be surprising when this approach to change management is so strongly resisted? The term bricolage can be defined as making creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are at hand regardless of their original purpose, stringing old parts together to form something radically new, transforming the present into the near future… The primary reason that the change management efforts of data governance are resisted is because they rely almost exclusively on negative methods – they emphasize broken business and technical processes, as well as bad data-related employee behaviors.”
He continues, “Although these problems exist and are the root cause of some of the organization’s failures, there are also unheralded processes and employees that prevented other problems from happening, which are the root cause of some of the organization’s successes. It’s important to demonstrate that some data governance policies reflect existing best practices, which helps reduce resistance to change, and so a far more productive change management mantra for data governance is: ‘If it ain’t broke, bricolage it.’”
photo credit: Kevin Hutchins
