Good caretaking is the result of genuine interest, aptitude, and appropriate skill sets being applied to what needs to be cared for. Caretaking is the more intangible aspect of the elements that make up data stewardship.
Being able to demonstrate genuine interest in data management and quality management practices should obviously be a key factor in who is appointed to the data steward roles. Such interest will usually stem from a person with a past history with and ongoing passion for data management, or perhaps someone who has been in other functional roles and recognized the value of good data. Either way, a data steward needs to have genuine interest in data and its integrity to fuel the right caretaking mind set.
In the planning stages of the MDM initiative when a steward model is being defined, the MDM project team should look closely within the existing business functions to identify good data steward candidates. Often there are a number of well-qualified internal candidates who will exist within the ranks of IT analysts, business reporting teams, process area leads, and support organizations. If they can be leveraged, they can bring a wealth of existing operational knowledge that can translate well to a data steward role.
Aptitude and appropriate skill sets should come from a combination of past experience, new orientation and training related to the data steward role, and having sufficient processes and tools that enable the data steward's ability to analyze and support the customer master data. There is nothing more frustrating for a data steward-minded person than to have a role and responsibility for data management and quality control, but lack an effective process or the tools that are needed to help support them. A data steward that can't dig in is a data steward who is not likely to stay very long in that role.
Caretaking also needs to be a common denominator across the data steward teams. While the people and process aspects of data stewardship can vary depending on global, regional, and local roles, the aspect of data caretaking is ubiquitous. The data governance council will set the high-level priorities, policies, and standards, but it will be the responsibility of both the core team and process area data stewards to execute the day-to-day coordination and quality management practices that require having a shared sense of a data caretaking.