ECM Governance That Actually Works

I've audited dozens of enterprise content management systems over the years. The pattern is depressingly consistent: a well-intentioned governance framework exists on paper, but the reality on the ground is chaos.

Why Governance Programs Fail

The typical governance initiative looks something like this:

1. IT or compliance creates a detailed policy document
2. The policy covers every conceivable scenario
3. Users are told to follow the policy
4. Nobody follows the policy
5. Content chaos continues

The fundamental problem? Governance programs are designed around what administrators want to control, not what users need to accomplish.

Governance That Works

Effective content governance isn't about control—it's about making the right thing the easy thing. Here's what that looks like in practice:

1. Reduce Friction to Zero

Every click, every decision, every form field is an opportunity for users to take shortcuts. The best governance systems don't require users to think about governance.

• Metadata should auto-populate where possible
• Retention policies should be invisible to users
• Permissions should be inherited, not manually assigned
• Naming conventions should be enforced automatically

2. Make Compliance the Default

If your governance model requires users to opt in, you've already lost. Build compliance into the templates, the sites, the libraries. Users shouldn't have to remember to apply a retention label—it should happen automatically based on content type.

3. Measure What Matters

Most organizations measure the wrong things. They track storage consumption, file counts, and policy violations. What they should track:

• Time to find information
• Duplicate content rates
• User adoption of proper filing
• Content decay (stale information that should be deleted)

These metrics tell you whether governance is serving its purpose: making information useful.

4. Build a Governance Community

Top-down governance gets ignored. Governance that involves content owners in its design gets followed. Create a network of department champions who:

• Understand local needs
• Provide feedback on policies
• Help train their colleagues
• Advocate for governance improvements

The SharePoint Reality

SharePoint is the default ECM platform for most organizations. Its flexibility is both a blessing and a curse—you can build anything, which means you can also build chaos.

Successful SharePoint governance requires:

• Site provisioning controls (not everyone gets to create sites)
• Content type standards (consistent metadata across the organization)
• Life cycle policies (automatic archiving and deletion)
• Regular audits (automated reports on policy compliance)

The good news? Modern SharePoint and Microsoft Purview provide tools that make governance enforcement far easier than it used to be. The challenge is implementing them thoughtfully.

Getting Started

If your governance program isn't working, don't create more policies. Instead:

1. Observe how users actually work with content
2. Identify the friction points that lead to non-compliance
3. Redesign workflows to eliminate that friction
4. Automate enforcement wherever possible
5. Measure outcomes, not just compliance

The goal isn't to make users follow the rules. It's to make the rules invisible.