Every data governance dashboard I’ve ever seen gets it backwards. Policy adherence rates. Training completion percentages. Stewardship coverage metrics. All measuring the same thing: how well the organization follows rules.
But here’s the provocation: compliance is a symptom, not a goal.
When governance succeeds, you don’t see better compliance metrics—you see faster decisions, more reliable operations, and teams that trust their data without thinking about it.
Organizations obsessed with compliance inadvertently reveal their operating philosophy. They’re still living in a world where success means control—where the role of governance is to prevent bad things from happening. This defensive posture creates the very friction that guarantees resistance. When governance is framed as protection, it implies threat. When it implies threat, people build workarounds.
The alternative isn’t abandoning governance—it’s reframing what success looks like.
The question isn’t whether people followed the data classification policy. It’s whether the marketing team launched their campaign faster because they trusted their customer data. It’s whether operations ran smoother because quality issues didn’t cascade through systems. It’s whether executives made better decisions because they didn’t have to question the numbers.
This isn’t semantic games. The metrics you choose shape the systems you build. Organizations measuring compliance build oversight mechanisms. Organizations measuring speed build enabling infrastructure. The former creates governance as tax; the latter creates governance as accelerant.
The most dangerous assumption in data governance is that if everyone follows the rules, good outcomes will follow. In reality, the causation runs the other way. When governance creates genuinely better outcomes, following the rules becomes the rational choice—not because it’s mandated, but because it works.
Stop asking whether people comply. Start asking whether they’re winning.
Read more:
