Business: Digital Governance

This is a sample chapter from Lisa Welchman’s new book Managing Chaos. 2015 Rosenfeld Media.

Chapter 7: Getting It Done

The governance framework design effort is a good opportunity for your organization’s digital stakeholders to learn how to work and collaborate better. So, even if you already have a sense of who on your digital team ought to have the authority to make decisions related to digital strategy, policy, and standards, it’s still important to go through the design effort with a larger team. Because it’s not just the end state that is important, but rather the interim conversation, collaboration, and compromise required to build your framework. Those activities will bring your team into better communication, better community, and better alignment. Read More

Often, when I attend conferences, I like to purchase a new book. This is how I discovered Lisa Welchman’s book, Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design, to which I was immediately drawn.

Digital projects are often challenging, creative, and fun. There may be a fair amount of healthy—and, sometimes, unhealthy—debate, but that’s generally a positive thing. Inevitably, if you are working on an initiative of any great size, someone will mention governance.

If there’s a faster way to remove oxygen from a room, I’ve yet to find it. Perhaps part of people’s aversion to governance is its reputation for bureaucracy, overhead, and generally slowing things down. There may be a sense of dissonance between those who exercise governance and those who feel encumbered by it. Read More

In her book Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design, Lisa Welchman shows us how to tame the digital beast. Her reality-tested approach and holistic view make for a great read that is worth every minute of your time.

The book’s subtitle promises digital governance by design, which will get the attention of curious designers and other digital workers alike. But it will also likely produce some skepticism in her audience. After all, don’t we owe a huge part of our creativity to the boundless freedom and chaos the digital environment provides? But if we can hold back the romantic within us for a moment, we’ll remember various situations in which our energy and creativity were stifled by chaos. Read More