From pizza to data: Governance, a lesson for companies

The kitchen is in full swing.
Hands move quickly, dough stretches across the table in an almost choreographed rhythm, the oven opens and closes as if it were breathing. Every ingredient has its place. Every step has a purpose.

There is no shouting. No chaos.

At La Governanza, making pizza is a disciplined craft; one that allows dozens of pizzas to come out perfect, identical, and right on time.

But the remarkable thing isn’t the pizza.
It’s the order behind it.

Every cook knows exactly what to do. Every ingredient is clearly labeled. Every process is documented. Every decision follows an unseen logic that holds the final quality together.

At first glance, it looks like nothing more than a well-run pizzeria. In reality, it’s something far more interesting.

Welcome to the kitchen where the future of data is baked.

La Governanza is more than a pizzeria. In fact, it isn’t a pizzeria at all.

The scene is fictional, a metaphor created to reveal something far more complex. Jan Meskens uses it to explore one of the most pressing challenges in today’s business world: data governance.

By turning the art of making pizza into a narrative device, he reflects the collective effort required to manage data with order, clear rules, and well-defined roles.

Because this story isn’t really about pizza.

It’s about necessity. About urgency. About the future.

And about how —quietly, methodically— organizations shape the information that underpins every business decision.

La Governanza: a pizzeria where nothing is left to chance

Those who step into La Governanza for the first time don’t realize they’ve entered a place defined by discipline. The air is filled with the scent of fermenting dough, freshly crushed tomatoes, and a stone oven warming the room.

Yet what truly sustains that perfect flavor isn’t a secret recipe.
It’s the invisible structure that keeps the kitchen running like clockwork.

Nothing is improvised. 
Nothing exists simply because “that’s how it’s always been done.”
Every ingredient has an owner. Every process has someone accountable for it. Every decision follows a clear logic.

This small, fictional restaurant is, in fact, an elegant representation of something far more serious: how a data-driven organization manages its data.

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This is where the metaphor truly earns its weight. Because in real life, most organizations don’t operate like La Governanza.

They operate like those kitchens where every cook follows a different version of the recipe. Where no one knows who ordered which batch of mozzarella. Where two pizzas both labeled “Margherita” never taste the same. Where a single expired ingredient can ruin the entire customer experience.

In the world of data, that kind of disorder translates into inconsistency, risk, errors, compliance issues, and poor decision-making.

And this is where the story meets reality: data governance is no longer a technological concern. It is a matter of business maturity, accountability, and the ability to compete in a market that demands surgical precision.

Data Governance: the order that turns data into trust

Data governance answers a question that is both simple and uncomfortable:

Can we really trust the data we use to make decisions?

Most organizations assume the answer is yes. Reality, however, tells a different story:

More than 70% of business users do not trust the data they rely on for decision-making, even though nearly 90% of organizations claim that data quality is a top priority.

For an organization to genuinely trust its data, certain conditions must be met. Data needs to be:

• Accurate, free from errors and duplication
• Up to date
• Consistent across the entire organization
• Accessible to those who need it
• Protected from those who shouldn’t
• Clearly defined, with shared and unambiguous meanings
• Traceable, with visibility into where it comes from, how it’s transformed, and by whom

This is, at its core, the promise of data governance: turning raw data into reliable, usable, and actionable information across the organization.

At La Governanza, that promise is simple. Every pizza follows the same recipe, regardless of who prepares it. In a real organization, it means ensuring that every department —finance, marketing, sales, operations— works from the same version of the truth.

Because data governance isn’t only about avoiding problems. It’s about unlocking opportunities.

When data governance is done right, it improves data quality and with it, the quality of every decision built on top of it.

Inside the kitchen: the invisible coordination behind La Governanza

As you step into the kitchen of La Governanza —amid the steam, the knives, and the scent of freshly baked dough— you begin to realize that the secret isn’t the recipe itself, but the human choreography that makes it all work.

La Governanza functions because everyone understands their role within a larger whole.

That shared understanding is precisely what makes this fictional pizzeria such a powerful metaphor for data governance: a system in which roles, processes, and ingredients are carefully orchestrated to ensure consistency, quality, and trust.

In the kitchen, every team member knows exactly what is expected of them.
In the enterprise, the same should be true.

1. The Data Governance Lead: the chef who sets the vision

At one end of the kitchen stands the head chef, the person who defines the restaurant’s identity. They decide which pizzas are served, the standards that must be upheld, which ingredients are acceptable, and which practices are simply non-negotiable.

Their role goes far beyond cooking. They establish the philosophy that holds the entire culinary system together.

In the corporate world, this role is played by the Data Governance Lead.

This is the person who defines:

• what “high-quality data” actually means,
• the policies that govern how data can be used,
• which definitions are official across the organization,
• and the cultural framework that guides every decision that follows.

The chef designs the recipes. The Data Governance Lead designs the data culture.

2. The Data Management Lead: the head of the kitchen

At the heart of La Governanza, where the pace accelerates and orders never stop—is the head of the kitchen.

This role doesn’t define the recipes. It defines how they are executed.

Which processes to follow. Which tools to use. Which timelines must be respected.
And how to ensure that every pizza turns out exactly as it should.

In the enterprise, this responsibility falls to the Data Management Lead: the person who turns governance principles into day-to-day operations.

If the Governance Lead defines what needs to be done, the Management Lead decides how to do it.

They are the layer that turns theory into practice and vision into execution.

3. The Data Owners: guardians of each ingredient

Working closest to the refrigerator are those who know every ingredient inside out, its origin, its quality, its shelf life, and the impact it has on the final experience.

They are the true owners of the raw materials.

In the language of data, these are the Data Owners: business leaders responsible for defining what key concepts actually mean across the organization.

What is a “customer”?
What qualifies as a “product”?
What counts as a “transaction”, an “order”, or an “incident”?

Data Owners set the meaning, the rules for usage, and the minimum standards each data asset must meet.

Without them, the organization would be cooking blind.

4. Data Stewards: the quality inspectors

As pizzas move from the oven to the pass, quality inspectors walk the kitchen floor in silence.

Their role is to catch anything out of place:

• a pizza left too long in the oven,
• toppings added incorrectly,
• a recipe poorly executed,
• or a small mistake that could compromise the customer’s experience.

In the data ecosystem, those inspectors are the Data Stewards.

They safeguard data quality, enforce standards, document issues, and keep the entire system consistent over time.

5. The Governance Committee: the board that sets the direction

In a small office above the dining room, the La Governanza board meets to decide the direction of the restaurant. They don’t debate how to slice the mozzarella, they focus on strategy.

• What changes does the menu need?
• Which processes should be reviewed?
• Which suppliers are no longer meeting expectations?
• How can consistency be maintained during peak season?

In the enterprise, this body takes the form of the Governance Committee: a cross-functional forum where business, IT, legal, compliance, and data leaders come together to discuss priorities, risks, changes, and the evolution of the operating model.

The board defines the future of the kitchen. The committee defines the future of data.

The messy kitchen and the ungoverned enterprise: when chaos is served on the plate

To understand the value of governance, sometimes all it takes is changing pizzerias.

Step out of La Governanza for a moment and walk into that other place in the neighborhood we all know—the one that smells inviting from the outside, but where something never quite works as it should.

Inside, every cook prepares the dough “their own way.” One stretches it too thin, another leaves it too thick. Someone improvises fermentation times because no one ever documented the process. Ingredients are piled up without labels; no one knows which batch arrived this morning or which one expired last week.

The oven displays one temperature on the dial and delivers another inside, depending on who last adjusted it. And when a pizza comes out unevenly, there’s no inspector to stop it. It simply goes out to the table, and the customer discovers the mistake too late.

The result is a bitter combination of disorder, inefficiency, and lost trust.

And the worst part isn’t the burnt pizza. The worst part is that no one can say exactly why it happened.

In the business world, this kind of kitchen is not an exception, it’s the everyday reality of organizations without data governance.

Reports may look identical, yet tell completely different stories: a KPI rises in marketing, drops in sales, and appears frozen in finance. Data is duplicated, contradictory, and scattered across silos.

No one knows which version is the “right” one. And without a shared version of the truth, decision-making becomes an exercise in cooking blind.

Even artificial intelligence initiatives —so promising in theory— run into a quiet but devastating reality: if the ingredient is contaminated, the outcome will be too. In business, that ingredient is data.

Without governance, data stops being a strategic asset and becomes something far more uncomfortable: a liability, and a constant source of uncertainty and risk.

Governance as a guide: data governance principles any organization can adopt

In La Governanza, the kitchen doesn’t succeed because of individual talent, but because of a collective choreography: clearly defined roles, well-established processes, and shared standards.

This coordinated movement —precise, almost elegant— is exactly what organizations need when it comes to data governance.

Because governance is not an administrative burden, nor a set of rigid rules. It is the operating system that allows complexity to flow without friction.

From this culinary metaphor, the core principles of data governance emerge, principles that any organization can adopt if it wants to work with data that is reliable, scalable, and aligned across the business.

1. What isn’t defined gets improvised: the importance of business definitions

In a messy kitchen, every cook interprets the recipe differently.
In an ungoverned organization, each department does the same with basic concepts like “active customer”, “closed sale”, “average order value”, or “churn”.

When there is no shared glossary, the organization stops speaking a common language.
Data loses its meaning, and decision-making turns into a game of chance.

The first rule of any data governance program is simple and uncompromising:

define in order to unify.

2. What isn’t owned deteriorates: the critical role of Data Owners

An ingredient without an owner eventually spoils. Data without clear ownership does the same.

In organizations, this responsibility falls to Data Owners, the business leaders who safeguard the integrity and purpose of the data within their domain.

Without ownership, data deteriorates quickly. It loses traceability, consistency, control, and, ultimately, meaning.

Ownership is not optional. It is the backbone of data governance.

3. What isn’t documented gets repeated poorly: the value of metadata

In a pizzeria, recipes are written down. In an organization, they should be too.

Metadata, glossaries, catalogs, and policies form the institutional memory of the data ecosystem. When documentation is missing, each team ends up “reinventing” the process—repeating mistakes and creating inconsistencies along the way.

Documentation is not bureaucracy. It is efficiency. It is clarity. It is scalability.

Without it, organizations fragment into incompatible versions of reality.

In many companies, the biggest bottleneck in documentation isn’t a lack of intent, it’s a lack of time. Manually documenting metadata, data lineage, sources, dependencies, and definitions simply doesn’t scale.

This is where technology can do what no human team can handle at enterprise scale.

Governance for Power BI automates this work by systematically extracting, organizing, and documenting metadata across your Power BI environment —from tables and fields to relationships, dashboards, data sources, and business rules— creating a complete, always up-to-date inventory.

In other words, as the business kitchen grows more complex, this tool quietly keeps the “recipe book” up to date without adding extra effort.

Data Governance doesn’t create order. It creates trust.

Many organizations approach data governance believing its purpose is simply to “tidy things up.” But governance doesn’t exist to impose order for its own sake. It exists to enable value.

It is the data governancde framework that turns data into a usable, reliable, and scalable business asset.

When implemented effectively, data governance does more than improve digital hygiene. It unlocks capabilities that were previously out of reach:

• It connects business and technology through a shared language and common definitions.
• It enables accurate, accountable AI models built on traceable, high-quality data.
• It reduces regulatory and operational risk through greater transparency and control.
• It optimizes costs by eliminating duplication, redundancy, and manual processes.
• It accelerates analysis by ensuring information is consistent and accessible.
• It improves customer experience—because reliable data leads to reliable operations.

But the most profound impact doesn’t show up in any spreadsheet.

Governance creates trust.

Trust that the pizzas will turn out right. Trust that the data is where it should be. Trust that the organization can move forward without fear of informational chaos.

Ultimately, that is the real lesson of La Governanza: behind every consistent result —whether it’s a pizza or a dashboard— there is always a system designed to inspire trust.

Conclusion: what every organization can learn from a fictional pizzeria

La Governanza doesn’t exist—but perhaps it should.

Because it captures, with almost pedagogical simplicity, the operating model any organization should aspire to build when it depends on data to function, decide, and compete.

It’s no coincidence that such an everyday scene —a pizzeria kitchen— can so clearly explain what happens when a company professionalizes its relationship with information. Data governance is neither a technical task nor a bureaucratic exercise. It is a human, organizational, and cultural discipline, one that sustains consistency, trust, and the ability to create value.

So the real question for organizations is no longer whether they need data governance.
That question has already been answered.

The important question is this: 

Is your organization ready to operate like La Governanza?

Those that are will lead the next decade: more agile, more accountable, and better equipped to turn data into smarter business decisions. Those that aren’t will keep improvising pizzas that never quite taste the same.

Before moving forward, many organizations need to understand where they truly stand on their data maturity journey. An objective framework can help assess the current state and identify the actions required to move ahead.

• If you want to move toward a more governed organization, we recommend downloading our Data Maturity Model to understand where you are today and what it will take to build strong, sustainable data governance.