Designing AI Governance That Actually Works

Ask most organizations to show their AI governance framework and you'll get a well-formatted policy document, a RACI chart, and a review committee that meets quarterly. Ask what happens when a genuinely contested AI use case lands on someone's desk mid-quarter, and the answers get vague fast.

Governance that only exists on paper fails at exactly the moment it's needed — when a decision is ambiguous, time-pressured, and consequential. Working AI governance needs pre-agreed decision rights for exactly those situations, a documented escalation path that people have actually rehearsed, and review committees that meet more often than the policy technically requires.

The test we use with clients: pick the most contested AI decision your organization made in the last twelve months, and walk the current framework through it. If the framework wouldn't have produced a clear, defensible answer, it isn't governance yet — it's documentation.