No Datum is an Island of Serendip

Continuing a series of blog posts inspired by the highly recommended book Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson, in this blog post I want to discuss the important role that serendipity plays in data — and, by extension, business success.

Let’s start with a brief etymology lesson.  The origin of the word serendipity, which is commonly defined as a “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise” can be traced to the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes were always making discoveries of things they were not in quest of either by accident or by sagacity (i.e., the ability to link together apparently innocuous facts to come to a valuable conclusion).  Serendip was an old name for the island nation now known as Sri Lanka.

“Serendipity,” Johnson explained, “is not just about embracing random encounters for the sheer exhilaration of it.  Serendipity is built out of happy accidents, to be sure, but what makes them happy is the fact that the discovery you’ve made is meaningful to you.  It completes a hunch, or opens up a door in the adjacent possible that you had overlooked.  Serendipitous discoveries often involve exchanges across traditional disciplines.  Serendipity needs unlikely collisions and discoveries, but it also needs something to anchor those discoveries.  The challenge, of course, is how to create environments that foster these serendipitous connections.”

No Datum is an Island of Serendip

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

These famous words were written by the poet John Donne, the meaning of which is generally regarded to be that human beings do not thrive when isolated from others.  Likewise, data does not thrive in isolation.  However, many organizations persist on data isolation, on data silos created when separate business units see power in the hoarding of data, not in the sharing of data.

But no business unit is an island, entire of itself; every business unit is a piece of the organization, a part of the enterprise.

Likewise, no datum is an Island of Serendip.  Data thrives through the connections, collisions, and combinations that collectively unleash serendipity.  When data is exchanged across organizational boundaries, and shared with the entire enterprise, it enables the interdisciplinary discoveries required for making business success more than just a happy accident or pleasant surprise.

Our organizations need to create collaborative environments that foster serendipitous connections bringing all of our business units and people together around our shared data assets.  We need to transcend our organizational boundaries, reduce our data silos, and gather our enterprise’s heroes together on the Data Island of Serendip — our United Nation of Business Success.

Related Posts

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The Three Most Important Letters in Data Governance

The Stakeholder’s Dilemma

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My Own Private Data

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The Collaborative Culture of Data Governance

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Comments

[Jim Harris]

From the LinkedIn Group for DAMA International, Rodger Nixon commented: “And hold hands and sing Kumbaya?”

And I responded: Someone is commenting on my blog post, Kumbaya :-)

I admit that I deserved that comment, Rodger.

My blog post was a little campy (and a little singing Kumbaya around the campfire-y).

However, as I have written before, data governance requires a significant and sustained change management effort, which requires that the organization unite around a shared purpose, encourage collaboration, and elevate the change to a cause.

Although some people will answer this call to action, many others will need more convincing. However, in the early stages of data governance, I recommend not trying to convert the naysayers, but instead, recruit those who are already willing to become champions of the cause.

This army of change agents, who will adopt new best practices and lead by example, will help the data governance cause permeate the enterprise by radiating from this social network of people who embody the ethos of a collaborative culture.

Someone (me) is pontificating about data governance and should stop now, Kumbaya :-)

And Rodger Nixon responded:

“The grace with which you accepted my gentle pin pricking of your post warrants a more thoughtful response.

We could have a good discussion on how governance efforts can be given a better chance of success. My experience has been that they almost all fail (though I do know of one success). The failure of most was not lack of management backing.

In fact, I take the view that it was management backing that was indirectly responsible for the ultimate failure. Their belief that it could be imposed from top down. Almost every organization I deal with has no idea at the lowest levels what its data is. You can not govern what you don't know but this basic truth seems to escape people.

Any governance effort has to be both top down and bottom up. The bottom up effort of cataloging data assets must reach a certain level of maturity before the top down effort can sensibly begin. The bottom up effort is unglamorous, expensive and tedious. No one wants to do it. Hence, failure is inevitable.”

And I responded:

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Rodger.

I definitely agree that most data governance efforts fail, and that top-down declarations are a common root cause (or perhaps, more accurately, a tree top cause?), which I blogged about in Beware the Data Governance Ides of March.

And I also definitely agree that data governance efforts have to be both top-down and bottom-up, which I blogged about in Data Governance and the Buttered Cat Paradox.

I also debated, via blogging and podcasting, bureaucracy versus agility in data governance with Rob Karel of Forrester Research and Gwen Thomas of the Data Governance Institute.