Unstructured Data 5: Face-to-Face

This is it. We've reached the final post in the "Facing the Elephant" series.

We started by naming the elephant: the 80-90% of our data that is unstructured and we all ignore.

We saw how, like the blind sages, our leaders in Finance, ICT, and Risk are only able to see their own part of the problem.

We watched the "rising tide" of the modern, collaborative ways-of-working, and the tools enabling it, showing why the elephant grew so large. The beast being fed by the frictionless creation of content in tools like Teams and Slack.

We opened the closet on the "skeletons" – the obsolete decisions, outdated standards, and sensitive data lurking in there, all invisible to traditional governance.

And last week, we saw how GenAI is the "double-edged sword": the catalyst that finds every skeleton - security by obscurity is dead - but this also provides the powerful business case to finally unlock the executive focus and budget we've always lacked to tackle this.

The blind sages can now step back and collaborate. We see the whole elephant - together.

And it's huge. It feels overwhelming, even insurmountable. So, what on earth do we do now?

How to Eat the Elephant

"The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time."

That is how we must approach unstructured data. The feeling of being overwhelmed comes from trying to boil the ocean - treating this as one monolithic "IT project".

It's not. It's a business priority and problem to solve, and it requires a new approach. That path forward is built on three "bites", taken in order: Strategy, Governance, and Automation.

Bite 1: Strategy (What Matters?)

You cannot govern what you cannot see and do not understand. The first bite isn't about technology; it's about people priorities.

Before you buy a tool or start a "clean-up", the business must answer one question: What matters?

Stop trying to manage everything. Start by identifying and classifying what matters most. This includes:

• High-Risk Data: Where are your skeletons? Find the sensitive PII, commercial IP, and regulated data.
• High-Value Data: What data will actually make your AI tools smart? Identify the "golden" datasets, the current standards, and the approved policies.
• The ROT: (Redundant, Obsolete, Trivial). This is the 50%+ of your data that's just noise. This isn't an ICT task. This is for business leaders to define. Hint: it also messes with your enterprise GenAI quality!

Bite 2: Governance (Who Owns It?)

Once you can see what matters, the next bite is accountability. For decades, unstructured data has been everyone's responsibility and therefore no one's - or worse, "Oh, that's an IT problem, what are you doing CIO?"

Governance means assigning clear ownership - who's data is it? It means creating simple, enforceable rules for the data identified in Bite 1. This isn't just about retention; it's equally about disposal.

We must make "delete" a confident and positive action, not a fearful one. This step transforms governance from a dusty policy document into an active, accountable business function.

Bite 3: Automation (How Do We Enforce It?)

This is where technology finally comes in (NOTE, it should always be technology last - People, Process, then Technology). The "rising tide" of data is too large for manual efforts - I am talking to you King Canute.

Once you have your Strategy (you know what matters) and your Governance (you know who owns it and what the rules are), you can finally apply Automation.

You use platforms to automatically enforce the rules, protect the high-risk data, and surface the high-value data for your AI. Importantly, the tools provide the business context and visibility for the actual data owners to make informed decisions.

The technology becomes the enabler of your business strategy, not just a frustrated digital janitor. And fortunately, there are platforms now that will dare to stare into the unstructured closet, and assist and automated addressing it. Hmm, is it closet or is it a floordrobe?

Facing the Elephant, Together

The core theme of this series is that this elephant cannot be faced by one person or one department. For too long, the business has created the "rising tide" of data, and ICT has been left to drown in it.

The path forward is one of collective leadership:

• Business Leaders must stop seeing this as an IT problem. They must step up to own the Strategy (Bite 1) and the Governance (Bite 2) - and their own unstructured data.
• ICT Leaders must provide the platforms and visibility to provide the transparency, visibility, and capability to enable those business decisions and deliver simplification through sustainable, managed Automation (Bite 3).
• Risk and Compliance must act as the guides, embedding practical, automated controls into the process, not just auditing the failures - someone has to manage this process.

The elephant in the room hasn't shrunk. But by standing together, with a plan, the right governance processes, and enabling tools, we're no longer blind.

It stops being an invisible, terrifying monster. It becomes visible. Manageable. And finally, by clearing the path for AI and innovation, it becomes valuable.

Call to Action

Thank you for following this series, a passion of mine and I am pleased to see, at least in our organisation, we are daring to look.

Now, I ask you: What is the first 'bite' your organisation needs to take?

Photo by Francesco Ungaro: Pexels