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The term “governance” is used more frequently these days in many organizations, but quite often there isn’t a common understanding of what governance means. It is important to define what is to be governed. Do we mean information governance, process governance, policy governance? And clearly roles and responsibilities must be established, which has organizational implications.

For most of our consulting engagements, we start with a simple definition: Governance is a set of leadership and organizational structures and processes that are designed to ensure consistency and accountability in meeting business objectives.

Consider the establishment of a content management shared service or “center of excellence”. The structure is a centralized team of business analysts, developers, and system administrators that serve as a pooled resource to assist business units or departments in deploying content management applications. The process this team employs begins with scoping, then requirements gathering, then development, etc. The process addresses consistency through the re-use of as many of the enabling capabilities (viewers, access controls, process maps) as possible – which also keeps costs down. Accountability comes from the manner in which a project pipeline is managed, providing visibility into workload and completion dates.

But the above description really focuses on IT execution. What about ensuring the business objectives are being met? Who decides the proper level of investment? What about competing priorities? In our experience, having a good, crisp governance mechanism to address the business objectives is the difficult part.

The single most important aspect to address on the business side is agreeing on authority. Sure, a committee of business leaders should be formed to vet ideas, opportunities, challenges, but ultimately a decision must be made. Groups of individual with competing interests have trouble making decisions. Thus, designating a single individual who ultimately can make the “final” decision is critical from our experience. Too many organizations soft-pedal this factor, which leads to drawn-out debates and inaction. Also important from a business perspective is agreeing on the key metrics that will be monitored. These can take many forms, but usually aggregate measures such as productivity or “output,” customer impact, or quality will suffice.

So if your organization is throwing around the term “governance,” take a step back and establish a good working definition, then hammer out a process, and finally (and usually the most difficult), address authority and measurement from a business perspective. Get these right, and you are on your way.