Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to what Counts, the podcast where we explore the real world, challenges and opportunities shaping information governance today.
Each episode draws on our experience working across industries, turning proven strategies into practical insights that you can apply inside your own organization.
Whether you're navigating information governance, facing a specific need, or simply curious about issues like email management, retention, contract data, or asset data management, this podcast gives you clear, actionable perspective on what truly counts in building strong, sustainable governance practices.
This is Lee, and in this episode, Moore and I will talk about something every founder, operator, and executive wrestles with.
The tension between growth and governance.
Because, let's be honest, when you're chasing new markets, new customers, new revenue, governance feels like something you'll get to later.
But later is exactly when problems show up. Maura, why do you think this is?
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Well, that was a great introduction, but I'm gonna just go a little sideways. First, because I just wanted to mention that, first of all, it's very unusual to see you without your glasses. And second, I know that you are struggling a little, and so I'm just gonna just kind of say it.
You're lucky enough to have a lot of sun in your eyes.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: So.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: So, listeners, if you see Lee put his glasses on and you can't see
[00:01:34] Speaker A: him anymore, see, this is the problem. Too bright in this room, which is
[00:01:40] Speaker B: not a problem, except if you want to see your eyes. So we're going to do our best with you without glasses until you can't take it.
All right?
[00:01:50] Speaker A: See me squinting the whole time? You'll know why.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yep. Okay, so back to the challenge. That tension that you mentioned between growth and governance.
So even us, the two of us, we own an information governance consulting firm, and I am a librarian, and I feel strongly about governance.
And yet, what did I do this morning? I spent a half an hour cleaning up email out of a certain file because I hadn't had time to look at it, and it took at least a half an hour to get things sorted. I had handled all the emails, but I had to decide which ones were records, which ones needed to be maintained, where did I want to keep them as part of the. The overall file, the overall record for this project.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Duke created folders for them.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I did create folders. Yeah.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: I can only imagine what those look like, what yours would look like compared to what mine would be.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Well, that is the challenge of folders that you let a person create.
But I'll tell, because I think it's something we've talked about before and it's worth the little tangent, they are folders that are based on the phases of the project. So it's a new client project and the first task has many subtasks to it. So I have an overall folder for project management and then a folder for this main task and subfolders under it to represent each of the subtasks and. And then another folder for the next big task that we know is coming. Because a couple of the emails that I was. That I decided needed to be kept as a record of this project are actually about the second task, the one that we're starting. Well, we started it on Tuesday, but I started it with the team down in the client space on Tuesday.
So there were just a few emails in the initiation step.
So process driven is how I organize my folders.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Hear that?
[00:03:56] Speaker B: And. And I. And I downloaded things that were attached to the emails and then got rid of the emails where it was appropriate to do that. So I am trying to follow all the rules that we give our clients. But my point is, in this tension between growth and governance, we're caught in that right now because we've talked before about how we're trying to launch and build the. The online version of our consulting practice where we're trying to put more and more into the hands of small and medium business owners to take control of their.
And that's an exciting growth avenue for us. And it takes a lot of attention, and also it's fun.
But we still have actual work to do, current work to do, client work to do. It's all actual work.
But we have client work. We have paid work to do.
And we're chasing that too, because in the tradition of consultants, you always go for the new work. You go for the new revenue, like you said.
So when we're talking here about this tension between growth and governance, it's not theoretical for us. This is real for us on our small level, but we also see it every time we talk to a client.
What we mostly see is the result of a client that has been focused on growth for a long time and 10, 15 years even, where it's just go, go, go, go, go. New new project, new acquisition, new this, new that, new this, new that.
And then you get to this tipping point where you're too big, you're too big to operate in that seat of the pants mode.
And the, oh, I'll get to it later, or I'll get to it just in time.
You accused me of that the other day, of being.
And it was a fair criticism. I am sometimes in that just in time mode. Because as a small business owner, you and I both have way too many demands on our, the few hours that we have available in the day.
So.
All right, so. So what do we do with this, this, this growth mind?
I don't know.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: This growth mindset when governance is ignored. Right.
Email becomes just too much, too much data. Unorganized data is everywhere. What else do you see?
[00:06:24] Speaker B: The de facto storage for all information, undocumented processes.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: You start to see things just happen because this is, this is what we need to get to work. We need to do the work and you're not backing it up with anything.
Right? People are doing their own work, making shadow systems using Excel spreadsheets and so forth.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so many spreadsheets. We talked about that yesterday too.
So I'm going to say at least we're aware like we're talking now about all the things that we have run into just in the last couple weeks. Because you know what, starting off a new year is always challenging.
You're kind of starting something new. In our case, our projects often kick off in the early part of the year.
It's just we run along with our clients budget cycles which means they end up closing things out toward the end of one calendar year and then starting up in the end of the next calendar year. So we do too.
It also means that we are running flat out in the last quarter of the year trying to get stuff done and then we're tired and we need a break.
And the last few years we've been better about taking the break.
But that means that January is hard.
So
[00:07:48] Speaker A: use a consultant to help you get out of this
[00:07:52] Speaker B: because we could use one really.
We are trying hard to apply our own advice to ourselves and I would say we're getting a handle on things, we're moving forward. So that's good.
But it's a constant struggle is what is the point. But it gets the bigger you are and the longer you stay in this growth driven lane, the harder it is to get out of it because you've actually built problems in.
So we just mentioned a couple of them. We talked about email as de facto storage, unorganized data and documents. Because when you get something in an email, you download it maybe to your OneDrive or Google Drive or to your hard drive and then you make changes and then you send it back in another email and you go back and forth a few times on that and you end up with copies in your email, maybe copies in your partner's email and copies in the other Guy's emails, some various versions are on, you know, wherever you've kept things too.
You have the shadow systems, you have the, which include things like spreadsheets, spreadsheet trackers, which. There's nothing wrong with a spreadsheet tracker that is well thought out. But a shadow system means you did it ad hoc because you needed something real quick.
Undocumented processes and I think going along with that is unclear decision rights where you're making decisions in this just in time way.
So you know, usually the COO might make some decisions, but the COO is out of an afternoon and you haven't been able to, you weren't ready when he left. And then you have to make the decision before he gets back. So you bump it up to the CEO or the CFO gets involved because it's about money, it's about spending money and that person makes the decision and you just move forward. And you're like, well they're all, you know, they're all the leaders, they're all, maybe they're all the founders, the owners of the company, but there's no clear process.
And so the more often you do that and you have a different answer every time, the harder it becomes to defend and the harder it becomes to delegate. So as you continue to grow and you hire more people that you want to give responsibility to, they don't know what clear path, what's the clear path to get approval.
They may make decisions that you don't agree with and then things go awry or they may be afraid to make decisions and then you have a lot of paralysis. We had a client a few years ago that they were very large client and yet destroying any documents out of off site storage, which are by definition inactive records. And in this, in this current age, those paper documents in offsite storage are probably not even the copy of the record that you count on. Probably there's an electronic copy of it that you actually look at and make decisions off of. You've just put a piece of paper in a box and put it in the warehouse to fulfill an outdated records retention schedule. Because you haven't had time to update the retention schedule and figure out how you're going to apply retention to the electronic information. Well, the CEO of this multibillion dollar company was signing off on every destruction order or he wasn't, because who had time for that? He's the CEO, he's like, whatever, it's 100, it's another thousand dollars to keep it in the warehouse for another month. Do that. I Don't have time for this.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: It cost me 2000 to sign something.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Right.
So you've accidentally created all these problems that keep building on themselves. The lack of clear decision rights, the lack of a clear path processes. That undocumented process that defaults to the highest person in an organization may not be the CEO. It may be the VP of a certain business line, but it's the highest person who has the biggest responsibilities is also tagged with approving an invoice for payment or signing off on a report of some kind.
Not a major report, not like an SEC report, but just the status report that has to go out to a small group of people because you haven't created a good process for doing those things and all of those things.
What's your line here? They aren't just operational annoyances, they're risk accelerators.
And I agree, absolutely. Especially in the world of information.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: That's good. I mean, we're, we're cutting close on time already. If you want to stop there.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: So now we've laid out the problem. I don't think we can get through the answer, but I do want to. So we'll have to do that in the next couple of episodes. But I do want to do two things before we disappear.
One is that this is not an insurmountable problem and awareness is important.
And the second thing is this is not something that you impose on the company, that anyone can impose on the company as a one and done. This is how we take care of governance and risk.
This is going to be an ongoing process and it is going to involve shared responsibility among leadership at different levels.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: And AI is not the answer.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Not by itself.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: There you go. Not by itself.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: So that's a preview. Stay tuned.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: If you have any questions, please send us an email at infoailblazer.us.com or look us up on the web at www.traillaserlearningacademy.com. thank you for listening and please tune into our next episode. Also, if you like this episode, please be a champion and share it with people in your social media network or like or subscribe to our podcast. That would help too. As always, we appreciate you the listeners. Special thanks goes to. Jason Blake created our music.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Thanks everyone.
Stay, come back next time.
