Someone on the team pastes a client brief into ChatGPT on a personal account to get a first draft moving. It works. Nobody told them they couldn't, and nobody told them they could. Or an AI-assisted draft drifts from the brand guidelines and reaches a client, because no one had agreed what it needs to clear before going out. These are both examples of where governance falls short.
The instinct at that point is to reach for a policy, so something gets written and lands in a shared drive, and not a great deal changes. People carry on much as before, because a policy sitting in a folder is a very different thing from a working rule that someone follows on a Tuesday afternoon with a deadline looming.
Real governance tends to be more practical than people expect. It answers the questions your team is already asking: which tools are approved and which are not, what client data can go where and what never leaves the building, how open to be with clients and customers about AI use, and who owns the output when something sits in a grey area and needs a decision.
Once those are settled, governance quietly stops being the function that says no and becomes a safe space to hold data, use the tools and build outputs in the open. People stop second-guessing themselves and start working with a bit more confidence, which is usually where the gains begin to show.
It is also the Dimension that decides whether the other four last. You can have the Mandate, Process, People and Infrastructure all in good shape and still see it unravel after one data leak or an awkward client conversation. So it tends to be less about adding rules than agreeing the few that matter and making sure someone owns them.
If you would like to see where your team sits across all five of our Dimensions, the Diagnostic is free on the site.