Corporate Governance: The Elusive BalanceRegulatory compliance is now a fact of life for nearly all businesses. The critical question for many organizations has become: How can we prevent this policy focus from unduly hindering the viability of strategic business processes?
by Frank J. Bernhard Continued from Page 2 Companies traditionally give IT an audit and archival responsibility. Only more recently has IT emerged with a role in business function and process integration. In other words, CIOs always stand accountable after the fact of technology's implementation: but increasingly, they will also have responsibility for information as it is passed between employees, customers, and suppliers. The CIO will need to play a more active role in deciding how a particular governance strategy applies to their organization — there is no passive choice in the matter. And of course, technology applied to implement policy brings its own complex set of functions, so the CIO's role become even more critical. If organizations expand information access questions — exploring who, what, when, and how issues arise from these questions — they quickly get an eye-opening revelation about why policy decisions must have the explicit influence of IT. Such questions include:
What really matters in setting the compass of IT policy is how its user constituents view changes that come with safeguarding a balance of corporate and individual interests. While the audit function is certain to never leave anytime soon, organizations must avoid situations that lead to such a need in the first place. Policy That MattersBusiness is about people, transactions, and progress toward objectives. Whether your headlong sights are set upon gaining marketshare, or as a Chief Security Officer aiming to minimize security risk, the net result still involves all three of these ingredients. How you leverage each in accomplishing an outcome is certainly a large contingency of policy in action. The next time your board of directors or CEO starts down the road of encumbering policy to set governance of the organization, stop to assess the impact of where the policy itself will lead the overarching business objectives. The answer is really quite clear. Too much policy without foresight ruins the business. Too little policy invites ambiguity and erodes progress. A balance of both sensibility and critical thinking makes for a better outcome. Frank J. Bernhard [fbernhard@ocg-us.com] is an author, technology economist and managing principal with OMNI Consulting Group LLP, an economic advisory and assurance firm. His latest book is Beyond Collaboration: How Supply Chains Meet Demand Chains (CRC Press, 2003). RESOURCES"Calculating for Uncertainty," Aug. 10, 2003
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