This is a series about digital sovereignty that won’t tell you to go and get more of it.
Sovereignty mostly gets treated as something to maximize – more control, more independence, always better. I don’t think it is. It’s a decision with a cost. Sometimes the honest answer is to accept the dependency and move on.
And sometimes you don’t get to decide at all. A regulation makes the call for you. A customer’s requirement does. Or the lock-in you’re already in quietly took the choice away years ago. Sovereignty is less a goal you pursue than a situation you navigate.
Which is why the useful question was never “how do we become sovereign?” It’s the opposite: what’s the least sovereignty you actually need – and how much can you comfortably leave in someone else’s hands? That minimum comes from three places: what you’re required to hold, what safeguarding the business requires, and what you simply want to hold for your own reasons.
Obligation. Necessity. Preference. Everything beyond that is a choice.
You probably know all this already, and have likely started your sovereignty work. The question is how much – and to answer it, you go and read what’s out there. A lot of it is genuinely good. It just tends to jump straight to solutions. And writing is often shaped by what the writer can offer. That’s not a criticism; it’s gravity. I feel it too – I work in this industry, and my instinct also runs toward solutions.
The examples in this series are mostly digital sovereignty. But the habit underneath – map what you depend on, weigh it, decide deliberately – isn’t only useful here.
Read the series in order – the pieces build. Or start with whatever question is most pressing; each piece also stands on its own. Or jump to the end, to the capstone article, if you want the whole loop first.
The first question is the one that usually gets skipped. Not how to be sovereign – but whether you need to be, and how much.
That’s where the series begins: mguenther.nl/series/world-that-wont-hold-still/.
Originally published here. Also published on LinkedIn.