Into The AI Governance Trap: The Beaten Path
We're rushing toward AI governance as the solution to AI chaos. I've watched this movie before. Here's the map, here's where you are, and here's what happens next if you don't change course.
Series
AI Governance
Most organizations are at Stage 2 right now: leadership knows there's chaos, someone's been tasked with 'figuring out governance.' The spiral from here is predictable. The escape is possible. The cost is real.
Overview
I’ve watched this movie before. Cloud governance. Platform governance. Data governance. Security governance. The script is always the same. Chaos creates fear. Fear demands governance. Governance becomes review process. Review process becomes bottleneck. Teams route around it. Real decisions happen elsewhere. The chaos continues, now with extra meetings.
AI governance is where all those patterns converge. This isn’t a new problem. It’s the same organizational dysfunction accelerated by AI adoption.
This series maps the nine predictable stages of governance failure, shows you where your organization probably is right now, then reveals what actually prevents the spiral. Not better frameworks or clearer policies. Organizational preconditions most organizations won’t build.
The Core Problem
AI governance isn’t a process problem. It’s an organizational maturity problem disguised as a documentation gap.
Organizations default to structure when facing uncertainty. Write policies. Create review processes. Stand up governance bodies. They’re building artifacts, not governance. Without the right preconditions, those artifacts become theater. Teams route around them. Leadership nods at dashboards describing a world that doesn’t exist.
In 18 months, organizations at Stage 9 will have AI implementations they can’t inventory, data flows they can’t trace, and governance documentation that describes a system that never existed. Theater doesn’t protect you from consequences.
What You’ll Learn
Part 1: The AI Governance Trap The nine stages from chaos to theater. Where most organizations are right now. Why the natural response leads straight into the spiral. Where it ends if you follow the script everyone else follows.
Part 2: Escaping the Spiral The organizational health preconditions that must exist before governance can work. The three governance requirements that separate enablement from enforcement. Why organizations won’t do this work. What escape actually costs.
Why This Matters
The path into the spiral looks faster. It produces visible artifacts. It lets you check boxes and tell leadership “we have governance.” That’s why everyone takes it.
The hard path requires conversations leadership would rather avoid, authority that threatens existing power structures, and measurement that might reveal uncomfortable truths. Most organizations won’t pay this cost.
But the spiral always ends the same way: chaos plus theater. Make a decision.
Who This Is For
Technical leaders watching AI chaos unfold. Architects tasked with “figuring out AI governance.” Security teams demanding controls nobody will follow. Governance professionals tired of building theater. Anyone who’s watched cloud governance, platform governance, or data governance fail the same way.
The Throughline
AI governance is where organizational dysfunction patterns converge. Technical gluttony accumulating because nobody’s making strategic decisions upstream. Architects stopping translation when they see problems. Organizations performing structure without wanting it. Platforms eroding because governance became theater.
This series connects those dots. The diagnostic showing where you are. The work that prevents the spiral. The choice most organizations won’t make.
Pattern recognition across 100+ organizations over 20+ years. The same dysfunction, the same script, the same ending. Until you choose differently.