argue about the website pretty much in perpetuity.
The Cisco Web team had a governance problem.
In a moment I’m still proud of, I stepped forward and broke the stalemate by assuming the authority that had never been formally placed. I said, “Let’s do it. We’ll be at greater risk continuing to manage our content the way we do now than if we implement this CMS.” Thus, we moved forward.
I liked that feeling of breaking stalemates and helping Web teams move forward, and I wanted to spend more time with my four-year-old son. So I left Cisco in 1999 to become a consultant. By then, the scope of Cisco Connection was off the charts (over 10M Web pages, 200,000 registered website users, and 400 content developers worldwide). I figured if Cisco with all its Web smarts found it hard to manage its website and Web team, other companies with the same problems probably would need help as well.
They did.
Fast-forward to today. My son is in university (see Figure 1.3), and on a typical day, I pick up the phone, and it’s a call from an organization that is having trouble managing its Web presence. Maybe it’s a large, global company with over 200 websites in many different languages. Or maybe they aren’t really sure how many sites they have or who is managing them. Perhaps their main site was hacked several times last year, and some of their customer personal information has been compromised. Maybe it’s a national government trying to figure out how to govern its national Web presence. Or it could be a university with a lot of headstrong PhDs who want to do their own thing online and a student body that expects an integrated user experience from their university.
FIGURE 1.3 It’s 18 years later, and he’s on his way to university.
Usually, our conversation starts with the clients telling me how they’re going to solve their problems. I hear the same solutions all the time. Most digital and Web managers try to design their way out of a low-quality, high-risk digital presence with a website graphical interface redesign, a new information architecture, a technology replatform, or a content strategy—and everything will be better. Often, it is better for a few months or a few quarters, and then the digital system begins to degrade again. Maybe a few rogue websites have popped up, or the core digital team finds out that there are a bunch of poorly implemented social accounts. This scenario happens over and over again because organizations haven’t addressed the underlying governance issues for their digital presence.
Along with fixing websites or applications and strategizing about content, organizations need to undertake a design effort to determine the most effective way to make decisions and work together to sustain their digital face. They need a digital governance framework. But, often, when I tell organizations that (another) redesign or CMS probably isn’t going to fix their problem and that they need to take the time to address their governance concerns, I often get all kinds of pushback:
“We work in silos. That’s our culture. We don’t govern anything!”
“We need to be agile and innovative. Governance just slows things down.”
“We don’t have time to design a digital governance framework.
We’ve got too many real problems with our website.”
In the face of a 15- or 20-year-old technically incongruent, content-bloated, low-quality website, here’s my challenge:
• Isn’t it better to take the time to come up with some basic rules of engagement for digital than to deal day-in and day-out with unresolved debates over content site “ownership,” graphics, social media moderation, and the maintenance websites?
• How many lawsuits, how many security breeches, and how many customers and employees do you have to annoy before you realize that governing your digital presence makes sense?
• What’s the bare minimum that needs to be controlled about your digital presence in order to manage risk, raise quality, and still allow different aspects of the organization the flexibility they need?
Isn’t governance the better choice?
Why “Governance?”
I’m often asked if I can find a more user-friendly word than “governance.”
No, I can’t.
For many, the word “governance” conjures up an image of an organizational strait jacket. Governance to them means forcing people to work in a small box or making everyone work the same way. They’d rather have me use words like “team building” or “collaboration model.” I usually refuse. Governance is good. And, after reading Managing Chaos and applying its guidance to your own organization, I hope you’ll agree. Governing doesn’t have to make business processes bureaucratic and ineffective. In fact, I’d argue that “bureaucratic and ineffective” describe how digital development works in your organizations right now—with no governance.
Governance is an enabler. It allows organizations to minimize some of the churn and uncertainty in development by clearly establishing accountability and decision-making authority for all matters digital. That doesn’t mean that the people who aren’t decision makers can’t provide input or offer new and innovative ideas. Rather, it means that at the end of the day, after all the information is considered, the organization clearly understands how decisions will be made about the digital portfolio.
There are many different ways to govern an organization’s digital presence effectively. Your job is to discover the way that works best for your digital team. Your digital governance framework should enable a dynamic that allows your organization to get its digital business done effectively—whether you’re a bleeding-edge online powerhouse or a global B-to-B with a bunch of slim “business card” websites. A good digital governance framework will establish a sort of digital development DNA that ensures that your digital presence evolves in a manner that is in harmony with your organization’s strategic objectives. A digital governance framework isn’t bureaucratic and ineffective. Properly designed, a digital governance framework can make your online business machine sing.
The proof is out there. Wikipedia is, arguably, one of the most substantively and collaboratively governed websites on the Web, but it is also perceived as a site that fosters a high degree of freedom of expression. The well-defined open standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) enable the World Wide Web to exist, as it is—without which we would not even be having this conversation. And the multiplicity of purpose and diversity apparent on the World Wide Web speaks for itself.
Your organization needs its own internal W3C, so to speak, so that departments, schools, lines of business—however you segment your organization—can be free to take advantage of digital channels, but within parameters that make sense for the organization’s mission, goals, and bottom line. In addition, it needs to intentionally design its digital team so that it can work efficiently and productively. And that’s the work of a digital governance framework.
This is your chance to establish the foundational framework that will influence the direction of digital in your organization for years to come. Business leaders and senior digital leaders need to get together and establish how to govern and manage digital effectively in their organizations.
