How to Talk About Governance Without Sounding Like the Fun Police

How to explain Power Platform governance to your boss, your makers, and yourself.

aka. the “Three Racoons in a Trench Coat Trilemma”

Intro: A Message for the Curious (and the Skeptical)

So I heard you were thinking about Power Platform Governance lately… and someone thought you have to read this?!

Don’t worry, this isn’t a policy document. It’s not a checklist. It’s a story about why governance doesn’t kill innovation. It protects it.

Think of it like traffic rules. No one likes red lights, but without them, we’d all be stuck in chaos.

In this post, we’ll talk about:

Why trust alone doesn’t scale
How to talk about governance without scaring people off
And why the right balance between security, compliance, and enablement unlocks real growth

The Trust Fallacy

“We trust our makers.”

It’s one of the first things you hear when you start asking about governance. And to be fair, it sounds noble. It speaks to the culture of innovation many organizations are trying to foster. You don’t want to be the person who says “no” when someone in Finance finally feels empowered enough to build their own app. You don’t want to shut down a citizen developer who’s found a way to automate a painful, manual process.

But here’s the thing: Trust works…until it doesn’t.

And the moment it doesn’t usually comes out of nowhere.

It’s the day someone deletes a flow that was quietly running a business-critical process. It’s when an app stops working because the person who built it left the company. And really no one knows how it works, or even that it existed. It’s when legal calls because a connector was used to share sensitive data outside the organization, without anyone realizing it. It’s when a VP asks, “Who owns this app?” and your only honest answer is: “We don’t know.”

None of these situations start with bad intentions.

They start with trust.
With enthusiasm.
With initiative.

And that’s what makes it so tricky: the mess doesn’t look like a mess while it’s still being built. It looks like progress. It feels like innovation. Until it scales beyond what trust can carry. Because trust is personal. It’s about people.

But platforms, especially low-code platforms, are bigger than people. They scale. They multiply. And as they do, trust becomes a fragile foundation.

You can trust a maker. But can you trust 50 makers across 12 departments, using 90 connectors, building 200 flows - some of which now automate processes no one is even aware of?

This is where governance comes in.

Not because we distrust our people. But because we care about them, and want to give them a structure that supports them even when things go wrong.

Governance is what allows trust to scale.

It’s how we turn “I know this person won’t mess it up” into “even if something breaks, we’re covered.” It’s the difference between relying on everyone to do everything right, and building systems where mistakes aren’t catastrophic.

Because the hard truth is: you will fall at some point. And when you do, the difference between a crash and a stumble…is governance.

Governance Is What Makes Movement Possible

Let’s step out of IT for a second and imagine your daily commute.

You’re sitting in traffic, surrounded by other people just trying to get where they need to go. There are traffic lights, lane markings, speed limits, roundabouts, rules about who yields and when. You might not love these rules but you follow them, because they’re what make the entire system work.

Now imagine what would happen if we turned them all off.

No lights. No lanes. No rules. Just vibes.

Would that make things faster? More innovative? More free?

Maybe for a few moments. But soon, everyone would be stuck. No one knows when to go. No one feels safe. And eventually, someone gets hurt.

That’s what Power Platform looks like without governance. Not a place of endless freedom, but a place where nothing moves smoothly.

People aren’t sure what they’re allowed to build. Apps are duplicated, overwritten, or abandoned. Flows break silently, and no one knows how to fix them. Makers feel unsupported. IT feels overwhelmed. And the moment leadership starts asking hard questions about data, compliance, ownership everything screeches to a halt.

Here’s the shift we need to make:

Governance isn’t about control. It’s about clarity.

When we talk about governance, we’re not talking about shutting people down. We’re talking about making it possible for more people to build safely, sustainably, and with confidence.

Governance means:

Makers know which environment to use.
Apps have clear owners and support plans.
Data policies are transparent and consistent.
Admins aren’t surprised by what’s happening, they’re part of enabling it.

It’s the difference between chaos and choreography.

Rules aren’t the opposite of innovation. They’re what make it repeatable. They’re not about distrust. They’re about scale. Because once you have more than a few people building, things get complicated fast and good governance keeps that complexity from becoming a barrier.

So next time someone says governance is too heavy, too bureaucratic, too slow, ask them this:

“What moves faster — a city with working traffic lights, or one where every intersection is a gamble?”

Governance Is Not a Single Goal — It’s Three Raccoons in a Trench Coat

Governance is often misunderstood as a single goal. But actually it’s three goals at once:

Make things secure.
Stay compliant.
Let people build freely.

Depending on who you ask, one of these usually wins out.

But in reality, governance is always a negotiation between three competing forces:

Security — keeping data, systems, and access protected

Compliance — following the rules, both internal and external

Enablement — giving people the freedom to create and innovate

All three matter. None of them can be ignored. But here’s the catch: you can’t turn them all up to full volume at the same time.

This is the governance trilemma.

If you focus only on security, you create a locked-down system where no one can build. Innovation slows to a crawl, and makers stop engaging. They either give up or move to unsanctioned tools.

If you lean fully into enablement, you lose control. Apps are shared widely without ownership. Flows run in production without monitoring. Data moves across environments with no oversight. It might feel like progress at first, but eventually, things break — and no one knows how to fix them.

If compliance is your only focus, the platform turns into a bureaucratic obstacle course. Makers stop trying. Admins spend more time enforcing rules than enabling success. You might be ready for an audit, but you’re not building anything meaningful.

Take one of the three away completely, and the platform tips over.

Try to ignore security, and you lose trust. Skip compliance, and you lose credibility. Ignore enablement, and you lose momentum.

This is where governance earns its name. It’s not about enforcing one rule. It’s about balancing tension. Every decision is a compromise. You don’t get to choose between security and enablement. You choose how they work together.

For example, you might allow experimentation in personal environments but require naming conventions and owner documentation in production. Or you might automatically allow standard connectors but add approval steps for high-risk ones. None of this is about picking sides. It’s about creating the space where risk and innovation can coexist without derailing each other.

Good governance doesn’t try to eliminate the trilemma. It respects it. And then builds a system that can live with it — not perfectly, but sustainably.

How to Talk About Governance Without Losing Your Audience

The hardest part of governance isn’t writing policies. It’s getting people to care about them.

You can have the perfect balance between security, compliance, and enablement. You can design the smartest DLP rules and name every environment like a legend. But if no one understands why it matters, or worse, if they think governance is just IT getting in the way again, it won’t stick.

Governance only works if people believe in it. And that belief starts with how you talk about it.

You’ll meet a few different types of people on this journey. Some are makers who feel threatened. Others are managers who just want “less friction.” And some are leaders who need a business case, not a tech talk.

Here’s how you talk to them without sounding like you’re just adding bureaucracy:

The Maker Who Wants Freedom

What they think: “Governance is going to take away my tools.”
What to say: “It’s not about stopping you. It’s about making sure your apps don’t break when you’re on vacation.”
What helps: Share a horror story, gently. Something like, “We had a flow that stopped running for two weeks because the owner’s account was deleted. Nobody noticed until invoices piled up.” Then pivot: “Good governance means your work lasts. That’s what we want.”

The Manager Who Wants Speed

What they think: “Governance slows everything down.”
What to say: “The right rules make things faster, not slower. Like how traffic lights reduce crashes and keep people moving.”
What helps: Emphasize clarity. “When people know what the process is, they don’t waste time guessing or fixing mistakes later.”

The IT Admin Who Thinks It’s Shadow IT

What they think: “We need to shut this all down.”
What to say: “You’re right to be cautious. But if we lock it down, they’ll just use something else. Governance gives us visibility and control, without becoming the villain.”
What helps: Show that you want partnership. Offer to co-design policies and share dashboards. “Let’s build the guardrails together.”

The Executive Who Thinks It’s Not Urgent

What they think: “Let’s worry about that once we scale.”
What to say: “Early governance is easier than crisis cleanup. Once this grows, we won’t be able to retrofit structure without serious effort.”
What helps: Translate governance into risk and cost. Talk about data exposure, audit readiness, and technical debt. “This is about being proactive, not reactive.”

The Legal or Compliance Person

What they think: “We just want control.”
What to say: “Let’s get you the insight you need, without turning the platform into a fortress.”
What helps: Propose flexible models. “We can define low-risk zones with minimal rules and strict zones for regulated data. You get coverage without shutting things down.”

The key is this:

you’re not selling rules. You’re selling clarity, confidence, and sustainability.

Governance isn’t something you explain once. It’s something you communicate continuously, in different ways, depending on your audience. It’s not about using the right buzzwords. It’s about reading the room, understanding fears, and showing how structure helps, not hinders, what people care about.

This is less about policy. It’s about empathy. And the more you practice it, the better your governance strategy will land.

Conclusion: Structure Sets You Free

Governance often gets framed as a burden. Another thing you have to do. Another rule. Another blocker.

But that’s not the full story.

Good governance is what makes everything else possible.

It’s what allows people to build without fear. It gives IT teams room to breathe instead of spending their time reacting to the next emergency. It turns Citizen Development from a wild experiment into something real, something sustainable, something you can trust.

When governance works, you almost don’t notice it. Not because it’s invisible, but because it fits. It clears the path instead of getting in the way. It creates clarity instead of confusion. It helps people do their best work, together, without stepping on each other or accidentally deleting half of Accounting’s reports.

Structure doesn’t have to mean rigidity. It can mean rhythm. Support. Routine. Shared understanding.

It’s the naming convention that makes a handover feel like teamwork instead of archaeology. It’s the environment strategy that tells people where to build, and when something is safe to test. It’s the app catalog or dashboard that finally gives someone the overview they’ve been begging for.

And yes, it takes effort. You have to think about how much control you really need, and how much freedom you’re willing to offer. You’ll make trade-offs. You’ll run into edge cases. And you’ll have to explain it all, probably more than once.

But when governance clicks, it’s not a cage. It’s scaffolding. It’s what holds the platform up while the real work happens.

That’s what enablement looks like. Not absence of rules, but just enough structure to build something that lasts.

🧵 Outro: Your Turn

If you’re reading this because someone asked you to “figure out governance,” take a breath.

You don’t have to solve everything at once. You just have to start.

Pick one thing. One policy. One conversation. One small improvement that makes life easier for someone tomorrow. Or start with this blog: Power Platform Governance - Setting The Scene

Don’t try to win the whole platform in a day. Try to build trust. Try to create clarity. Try to leave things just a little better than you found them.

And if someone rolls their eyes and says, “Do we really need governance?” Just smile and say, “I’m not here to slow anyone down. I’m here to make sure we don’t break things the moment they start working.”

That’s governance. And that’s how we keep moving forward.

Questions or remarks? Find me on LinkedIn and BlueSky and let’s talk about governance in a better way.