Compliance kills commitment

How much is your organization driven by compliance and how much by commitment? Are your people compliant to rules, policies, and procedures? Or do they really believe in what they do? This is a fine yet very important differentiation, and many companies get it completely wrong.

Normally, it starts with some isolated items with which each company (and even each person) must comply, for example, bookkeeping regulations and rules for signing contracts. The issue starts when compliance rules replace intelligent problem solving and creative thinking. 

Compliant people are often less committed.

Why is that? Because people focus more on complying to rules and forget to think about the bigger picture: What is the intention of this policy? What is the purpose of this process? Can we achieve results in a smarter way? Too much compliance kills this kind of thinking. 

So, how do we create more commitment instead of or in addition to compliance?

• Share ideas and purposes that people can commit to. How inspiring is your vision? How clear is your strategy? People apply even painful rules much easier if they see the overall purpose.
• Cut back the policy overkill. This might also include fancy methodologies such as 6Sigma or the latest process documentation that nobody understands.
• Where policies are needed, focus more on real compliance (with emphases on "real") instead of creating new rules.

To get started, let somebody count all policies and compliance rules in your organization. You will likely get a number far higher than expected.

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This post is from our Friday noon memo #103. Interested in regular updates? Sign up here.
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