I was recently pondering about the following question related to media (and not only media) governance: what gets more recognition: cleaning up a major mess or keeping a tidy house day-in, day-out?
My conclusion is that for following reasons major fixes are more recognized by the organizations than an ongoing good stewardship:
– Fixes are more quantifiable: a total value of the waste that has been stopped or a price reduction on overpriced media gives a specific amount to report and claim as a success. Preventive maintenance, on the other hand, generates efforts, but it’s hard to put tangible price tag to brag about
– Fixes make better stories: we came in, found all these huge problems, thought of and implemented solutions and we saved the day (applause) vs. we keep things under control, nothing to see here, carry on (yawn…)
In reality, however, good governance and preventive maintenance create much more value for the company, because there is no stage of the value loss. Think of it in terms of having a million and keeping it (or even getting a decent interest on it) vs. having a million, successively losing a good chunk of it through different dubious practices and then realizing that you actually need to keep whatever is left (your best-case scenario is that you actually find some of it back).
Good governance and preventive maintenance should be appropriately recognized as a major value-saver/contributor and rewarded (and not just penalized for lack thereof). The challenge is to have a reliable and tangible metric for finance and procurement to agree on and acknowledge as value contributor.
Next time your audit shows no major outages, it’s time to acknowledge the efforts of the organization that keeps it this way.
If you want to find out more on how you can get rid of waste and put the right governance process in place, get in touch.