Just Enough, and Nothing More…
I think we can all agree that the Complacent culture is one to avoid at all costs. But Compliance is a different story.
Every business needs Compliance to be successful. They need that order and structure. You’d better believe I expect Compliance when it comes to pilots doing safety checks. Same for hospital operating rooms, food manufacturers, and so on.
Order and structure are absolutely critical to the success of any organization. The problem arises when Compliance becomes overemphasized, taking on a life of its own while no longer serving a truly significant purpose.
Recognizing a Compliant Culture
The dominant theme in the Compliant dimension is following the rules. Everyone is expected to stay within the predetermined procedures and processes designed to avoid mistakes. The mindset here is controlled scalability and consistency.
That is not a bad thing unless creativity and innovation are secondary to simply duplicating business practices.
Compliance is a basic requirement for every business to run smoothly, safely, and successfully. From a purely business point of view, a commitment to Compliance has primarily strategic motivations: just like normal citizens, companies must comply with existing national and international laws.
For example, Finance and Healthcare are just two industries with extremely strict compliance guidelines around customer privacy, as it should be. The transportation industry must also follow strict safety laws. And certainly the COVID pandemic brought a whole new set of compliance mandates to the forefront with many businesses being required to comply with prevention requirements to even open their doors.
The other side of compliance, however, is that it can be demeaning by nature because, left unchecked, it tends to treat employees like robots who can’t be trusted to think independently.
Employees begin to ask, What is expected of me? rather than How can I best contribute?. They begin to focus on avoiding trouble by following the rules.
When Compliance Becomes Unreasonable
Leaders become bosses who enforce the rules and monitor compliance, not drivers of positive change. Allowing this dimension to dominate a workplace can be a slippery slope into the unreasonable. For example:
- Martha Stewart’s Living Omnimedia employees must follow strict rules when it comes to their desk space. In 2009, when the media company’s new offices were opened, they came with instructions for staff to prevent the minimalist design theme from being tarnished. This not only included using red or black ink exclusively, but also banned them from bringing any personal items to work, including novelty mugs and framed photos.
- Abercrombie and Fitch’s Look Policy Guidelines for staff at its stores became notorious in the early 2000s. The biggest rule for store associates? They had to be good-looking. Former CEO Mike Jeffries said in 2006, “Good-looking people attract other good-looking people… We don’t market to anyone other than that.” Thankfully these policies, which included referring to sales staff as “models” and requiring male staff to work shirtless, were overhauled in 2015 after Jeffries stepped down.
- Staff at major UK engineering firm Sparrows received a stern email in 2013, forbidding the use of company milk for cereal. The message stated that the milk was to be used in tea and coffee only, and anyone doing otherwise would be “dealt with.” Yikes.
When the Compliant dimension goes too far, excessive energy and thought get put into protocols to avoid mistakes. It assumes people won’t do what’s right without a set of rules. You simply cannot systemize success with rules and procedures.
In reality, people don’t behave the way you want them to just because of a set of rules or procedures. No organization of any size can ever achieve 100 percent compliance to a set of values and behavior.
When people are motivated only to follow the rules, never stepping outside of the box, then success becomes about simply avoiding mistakes. I don’t know any business that has become truly successful by that measure. In fact, on the contrary—mistakes are critical for growth and success.
The key is to keep it where it belongs and not let it drive all conversations, relationships, and the culture in general. The ideal level of compliance is just enough and nothing more.