IT governance: dancing with the stars

It has been a dull week, had to write a ten pager on IT governance. The chapter on IT governance is part of a book on business/IT fusion which we will release in the fall of this year. The challenge for me as a co-author is: how can I turn a boring subject like governance into something more sexy. For the laymen amongst you, THE reference in this field is the IT Governance institute and they define IT governance as:

A responsibility of the board of directors and executive management. It is an integral part of enterprise governance and consists of the leadership and organizational structures and processes that ensure that the organization’s IT sustains and extends the organization’s strategies and objectives. IT governance is the organizational capacity exercised by the Board, executive management and IT management to control the formulation and implementation of IT strategy and in this way ensure the fusion of business and IT.

Although I don't want to question ITGI's authority in this domain, I don't fully agree with their definition. What I am missing in this definition is the notion of culture, mindset, behaviour as part of the governance process. Sure, it is about structures, processes and relational mechanisms (Peterson, 2003) but most of all, it is about culture. You can have steering committees and IT boards, let the business decide on funding and IT strategy making and have participation mechanisms in place but will this result in an effective governance? For effective governance, it takes two to tango.

Effective governance for me is: the right people making the right decisions in the right IT domains thus ensuring the right effect. Effective governance is about distinguishing between strategic and tactical governance, between offensive and defensive governance and between business's and IT's accountabilities. You can call it differentiated governance but above all it is about having the right mindset to steer, decide, govern and monitor IT's performance.

Where most organizations rather see governance as a burden, I see it as an opportunity... Governance can be fun if the right dynamics are at play. Having the right dynamics is where the tango bit comes in: I am not a big dancer but I do know that dancing the tango is about being complementary, sometimes you lead but sometimes you are being led. Sometimes IT is in the lead (IT infrastructure strategies) and other times business is in the lead (IT investment decisions). You will feel that you have found the right rhythm when business has a clear idea about the organization's strategic direction and IT can formulate an appropriate IT roadmap to support and enable this.
You know that you will be close to winning "dancing with the stars" when the C-level suits express their view on how they see the enterprise's business operating model so IT can subsequently consult on buy, build or compose decisions - whether to implement shared or decentralized platforms.
Effective governance is also about applying different mechanism for running IT and innovating with IT - most innovation initiatives are killed because organizations don't have the right processes in place to manage and steer on innovation. You don't manage (technology) innovations in the same way as you manage your infrastructure stack - seems obvious but apparently it isn't. Dancing a waltz is not the same as dancing the lambada...

So want some good advice from a non-dancer? It is all in the practice, if the rhythm is not right, try some different steps - let the other lead instead of you leading - if tango does not work, try the merengue instead. Eventually, you will find the right dancing style which suits you both.