Governance systems are often not at the forefront of critical discussions within organizations. Too many see such things as unnecessary administrivia that can be more effectively implemented with decisive leadership. Yet since these leaders are not experienced in these details, they and their organization can be caught up in environments which are highly political, rather than rational, in their tactical decision-making. Avoiding such situations requires attention to and regular execution of a number of behaviors within the organization:

1. Governance leaders must communicate the plans, status, and motivation for their activities across the entire organization. People believe what they see, and governance will only be relevant if it is relevant to the work they do, and is how they actually manage that work.
   1. Sponsorship - Who wants governance? How will sponsors demonstrate their commitment?
   2. Goals - What does the organization mean by the term 'governance'? Why are we doing this? Where is the expected leverage? How will existing (vs new) work be affected? How will we measure success? What are minimum hurdles? Targets? Strategic frameworks (Maturity models, standards, etc)
   3. Priorities - How important is this compared to other work the organizations do? How are gaps identified & closed? Who is assigned to address those gaps? How much of the organization's attention (resources, budget, etc) is focused on this?
   4. Risks - How to identify, communicate, and manage
2. Governance leaders must define the scope and boundaries of their activities (i.e. their [w:terms of reference])
   1. Stakeholders (executives, agencies, board, committees, organizations, doers, etc)
   2. Affected business entities (internal & external) & systems (financial, legal, etc)
   3. Requirements (regulatory, customer, and internal business)
   4. Resources (people, assets, technologies, etc)
   5. Constraints (e.g. 'No writing should be longer than a page')
   6. Critical Timelines, i.e. what the business needs and by when
3. Governance stakeholders must commit to creating a voluntary culture of compliance without bureaucracy (fire prevention instead of fire-fighting). This is a journey, not a destination.
   1. Create necessary 'enabling' infrastructure (information architecture, knowledge repository, taxonomies, assessment criteria, scorecards, etc)
   2. Identify and obtain essential information (relevant, accessible, clear, easy to navigate) and make sure people are acting on it
   3. Organize and deliver support infrastructure (tools, training, mentoring, etc)
4. Governance must be built on a consistent, user-friendly foundation
   1. What are the key objects of interest? (What is quality? What is a defect? What are business entities, roles, policies vs procedures, requirements vs guidelines, best practices,.... )
   2. What are the critical attributes of those objects? (formats, packaging, sources of authority, degree of independence, level of documentation, ... )
   3. What are the most important action verbs that operate on those objects? (author, review, approve, assess, audit, demonstrate compliance with, ... )
   4. Where do you go for information? Help?
5. Governance stakeholders must define, implement, and optimize key processes to ensure affected groups are represented, engaged, and effectively participating in the collective efforts
   1. Planning (including process architecture and implementation phasing)
   2. Development & review of writings
   3. Change management and notification
   4. Deployment
   5. Alignment
   6. Consolidation (merging governance for two environments)
   7. Retirement
6. Governance-based organizations must establish and secure commitments for critical responsibilities
   1. How the boundaries on authoring writings will be established (functions, organizations, etc)
   2. Who will author & maintain policies and processes (and what rules must they follow?)
   3. How will compliance be assessed (i.e., how will you enforce the rules?)
   4. How will policy implementation be elaborated across affected organizations?
   5. How will ambiguities about policy intent or implementation be resolved?
   6. How and where progress will be measured and reported?
7. Review and tailoring provisions (waivers, appeals, etc), and their required notifications, must be defined and recorded so the basis of such decisions can be evaluated over time under different conditions.