Inside Applied Data Governance: Expert Perspectives from the ADGP Program Episode 4: Building Executive Commitment for Data Governance with Jimm Johnson

Theory is the skill.

It represents a perfect world, perfect conditions, perfect data, perfect behaviors.

And it's almost like, you know, the demonstrations when IT vendors come in and they pitch their tool, the demo is perfect.

I mean, that's not reality because you go to implement that tool and you realize that there's all kinds of challenges that are not represented in the perfect world.

That's theory.

It's a concept.

It's perfect on paper.

You can refine it indefinitely, but you don't really know whether it works.

And then it's also retrospective.

It's based on what we know, what we what we can observe and what we believe is possible based on what we know and observe.

So now let's talk about application.

This is where it gets real.

You walk out of the theory and you're in the real world and conditions change and data is messy and people are challenging and culture is strong.

And you have to put theory to the test and see what works and what doesn't.

And if it does work, how well does it work? And you discover gaps and assumptions about your theory or your understanding of it.

And then you start to troubleshoot everything in real time.

And that's where the rubber meets the road.

Application is all about perspective.

It's creative and forward-looking.

And without theory, it's guesswork.

But with theory and this feedback loop that you create by trying things and learning from them, you're troubleshooting in real time.

And that's really the true value of application.

You can't learn that from a textbook.

So there's a saying, I think it goes, in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice.

But in practice, there is, right? So If you're data, I mentioned if you're a data or IT person, I mentioned earlier, you know, the perfect demos, that's theory, it's a vision, you can work towards it, but it's going to take you time.