The obvious is sometimes not so obvious. Without a vision statement, there is no north star. Create a vision that shows the possibilities and align it with how your organization gets things done.
Start populating the data catalog with what is important to the business. Understand their key objectives and build a partnership where the vision safely unlocks the potential of your organization's data for everyone.
Recognize and support those who can share knowledge about your data. Remove the tedious manual work by automating data classification, policy assignment, and other stewardship tasks to help stewards focus on their most meaningful contributions.
Take steps to construct your vision one block at a time. Add descriptions to data assets, create glossaries for essential terms and metrics, and establish data governance policies. Each block adds to a foundation to help others understand how to use data appropriately.
By completing the right-hand side of the active governance wheel, you will have data that consumers can find and understand.
Now, it's time to build trust!
Having data governance policies with the data is a significant step in unlocking the potential of your organization's data. Visibility of the policies before data use keeps everyone informed of how to treat the data when using it.
Now it is time to promote trusted data use with everyone, showing the benefits of having data they can find, understand, trust, and use. Show how to have conversations about the data and policies to help others feel confident in their data use.
Monitor progress to see how your vision is taking shape. Show key stakeholders how the steps taken are improving policy conformance and removing the fear of audits. Take the time to celebrate success and reflect on what is going well and where things can be improved.
Now that you know the steps, its time to build your governance program.