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5 Reasons I Started Taking SIAM Governance Seriously

From “Just Get It Working” to “Run the Kitchen” – The 5 Reasons I Started Taking SIAM Governance Seriously

In this guest post, author Barry Corless shares his thoughts on governance. Barry is Director Consulting Expert at CGI and an IT and service management professional with almost 40 years experience in technology, governance and service delivery. With a passion for helping organisations break out of the “just getting things working” mentality to creating sustainable, high performing services, Barry focuses on governance, service integration, organisational capability and continual improvement. With extensive experience accrued over his career, Barry has a pragmatic, business-focused approach to governance. Barry helps organisations balance control with agility, and ensure that people, process and technology are aligned. Barry is a strong advocate for using governance to enable better business outcomes, improve accountability and support long-term business objectives, rather than hindering them with unnecessary bureaucracy.

I didn’t even really know what IT governance was at the start of my career although to be fair, that was nearly 40 years ago. The IT industry was a different beast back in the late 1980’s. We had fewer frameworks, fewer acronyms, and a lot more “just get stuff working and we’ll figure the rest out later.”

Governance wasn’t something you thought about or did. It was something that sort of existed in the background. A word occasionally wheeled out in management-speak when something had gone wrong, usually accompanied by a strained team meeting and a new document nobody asked for (or read if we are honest). So, I formed an early view on governance, and it was not a positive one.

Governance was:

  • Bureaucracy I didn’t need
  • Meetings that multiplied like rabbits
  • Something that slowed us down without ever fixing anything

Fast forward twenty years into the start of what we now call the SIAM world and it looked exactly the same. This time we had multiple internal and external service providers, more noise, and more opportunity for nobody to quite own anything! So, what changed my mind?

First, a definition of Governance that I could relate to…

“Who gets to decide what, how those decisions are made, and what happens when people disagree.”

That’s it…simple, no management-speak, no sacred Jedi texts! Simple layman’s terms.

Now, people who know me will be aware that I love nothing more than a good analogy…so here’s my governance one that I’ll use to illustrate my points.

Think of a busy ‘posh’ restaurant’s kitchen. It’s Saturday night and the restaurant is full of people celebrating big occasions – engagements, birthdays, graduations. The orders are flying in and customer expectations are sky high.

Without governance:

  • Three chefs cook the same dish
  • Nobody owns the pass to the front of house
  • Orders go out half-finished… or not at all
  • Arguments break out mid-service
  • Customers start to notice – vocally!
  • And somehow… it’s always someone else’s fault.

And somewhere outside, Gordon Ramsay is pacing up and down with his Kitchen Nightmares film crew, sensing an opportunity

Now add governance:

  • The head chef sets priorities and has final say
  • Prep stations are clearly owned
  • Orders flow properly
  • Escalation is immediate (“Chef, we’re out of seabass”)
  • Standards are enforced

Everything actually moves faster, but more importantly, it moves in the same direction.

OK, back to the story, what changed my mind and still shapes how I design SIAM governance today?

1. Having No Governance Just Rolls Out the Red Carpet to Captain Calamity

For years, I equated lack of governance with agility. There were fewer hoops to jump through, we made faster decisions, so there was less waiting. Simple? Yes, until things got complicated.

In a SIAM model, without governance:

  • Nobody is clear who decides what
  • Conflicts drag on or get ignored
  • Service Providers optimise locally, not collectively

Like our pre-Ramsay kitchen… everyone was busy, pans flying, orders being shouted, lots of energy and movement… but half the tables still waiting and nobody quite sure what’s actually leaving the kitchen!

Lesson 1: Governance doesn’t slow you down. It stops you charging in five different directions simultaneously!

2. Because Suppliers Don’t Collaborate by Accident

There’s a comforting myth that if you put the right people in a room, collaboration will magically happen. To a certain extent, with little luck and a dash of fairy dust…yes. It might start well with the honeymoon period when people are helpful, flexible and willing. Cautionary tale… goodwill has a shelf life. In a Ramsay kitchen, it lasts until about the third returned plate. After that, you’re running on structure… or you’re not running at all. In any pre-SIAM multi-provider environment, External Service Providers (Suppliers) are driven by contracts, incentives, and their own targets which may not drive or reward collaboration. So, Governance has to create the conditions for collaboration:

  • Forums / Boards with clear Terms of Reference
  • Defined accountabilities
  • Agreed behaviours
  • Escalation paths that don’t feel like nuclear options

Lesson 2: Without governance, collaboration becomes optional and optional things disappear exactly when you need them most.

3. Because Major Incidents and Emergency Changes Don’t Lie

You can ignore governance on a good day. You can’t ignore it during on a major incident bridge or at an Emergency Change Approval because that’s when everything becomes visible.

  • Who’s leading?
  • Why is the third-party engineer still sat the gatehouse 45 minutes after arriving?
  • Who’s making decisions?
  • Why are three suppliers fixing the same symptom while nobody owns the root cause?

It’s basically Kitchen Nightmares mid-service. Orders are piling up; Nobody owning the pass to the waiters; Multiple chefs are duplicating effort. Front of house is promising what the kitchen can’t deliver. Then Ramsay steps in. “Stop.”, he yells. Suddenly:

  • One person leads
  • Roles are clear
  • Decisions are made once
  • Communication tightens

The chaos disappears like free Guinness at a rugby club end-of-season do! The same people, same environment, but completely different outcome. In SIAM, poor governance turns major incidents into confusion played out over two teams’ bridges. By contrast, good governance feels structured, calm, decisive.

Lesson 3: Once you’ve seen the contrast good governance makes, it’s hard to unsee it.

4. Because “Process” Was Never the Real Problem

I spent years blaming processes. It’s too heavy, too rigid and too bureaucratic. I missed the point because the real issue wasn’t process, it was ownership. In Kitchen Nightmares terms, it’s a kitchen full of recipes… but nobody owning the implementation i.e. the dish leaving the kitchen. Without clear ownership, processes get ignored, weaponised and endlessly debated. In the calamity kitchen, you can hear it instantly…not at my station, that’s not my call, I just followed the process.” Cue Ramsay, “I don’t care about the recipe. Who owns creating this dish?”

That’s the pivot point because governance makes ownership explicit. It’s not just who runs a process, but who is accountable for the outcome, the quality and what happens when reality doesn’t follow the script.

Lesson 4: The number of organisations with process managers but no process ownership activity is enough to make you want to cry.

5. Because Strategy Without Governance Is Just Noise

You can have a brilliant SIAM strategy and a great “Exec Deck” of slides. You can have strong messaging and even executive backing but without governance – it drifts like the smell of burning from the kitchen.

In Kitchen Nightmares terms, it’s Ramsay unveiling a beautiful new menu full of recipes…then he leaves the kitchen. The first service is delivered with enthusiasm. Then old habits creep back, shortcuts appear and standards start to wobble. It’s not that the strategy has failed. More that it’s just evaporated like brandy on a Christmas Pudding. Governance is what happens when Ramsay stays on…not to do it BUT TO OWN IT!

It’s where strategy becomes real:

  • Priorities reinforced
  • Behaviours shaped
  • Trade-offs made under pressure

Lesson 5: Without governance, strategy becomes background noise.

The Bit I Got Completely Wrong

I thought governance was about control but it’s actually about clarity.

  • Clarity of decision-making.
  • Clarity of accountability.
  • Clarity across a complex, multi-supplier ecosystem.

In SIAM, that’s the difference between a group of suppliers doing ‘stuff’ and an integrated service.

In a Kitchen Nightmares, it’s the difference between a room full of people cooking and a service that actually works.

The Killer Realisation

The moment it clicked? After clarity came the realisation that governance isn’t there to manage people but it’s there to create an environment where the right things happen even when you’re not in the room.

If everything falls apart the moment you step away, that’s not governance, that’s supervision. The bigger issue we now face is adding AI into the mix to amplify it…brutally I suspect. The truth is accepted that AI scales whatever you design. Ergo, if governance is weak then:

  • Ambiguity multiplies
  • Poor decisions repeat faster
  • Inconsistency becomes systemic

If governance is strong:

  • Decisions are clear
  • Boundaries are explicit
  • Outcomes are consistent

AI doesn’t then replace governance, but it industrialises it. Think of it this way:

A well-run kitchen with Ramsay owning the pass to the front of house works because everything is clear. Now clone that kitchen 50 times overnight and if governance is solid, you get 50 consistent services.

If it isn’t? You get the multiplier effect and 50 versions of the same chaos.

Final Thought

I didn’t become a governance convert overnight. What I did was stop seeing it as overhead and started seeing it as foundational – Almost invisible when it works and indispensable when it matters.

In a Kitchen Nightmares kitchen, nobody applauds the system when service runs smoothly. They just enjoy the meal. Strip that structure away and it doesn’t take long before the restaurant empties and the shouting starts.

In a SIAM model, where complexity is the default, that governance structure is not just a nice-to-have it’s the whole game.

Governance? Quiet when it works but unmissable when it doesn’t.

Bon appétit.