Culture vs Compliance: Just Another Chicken and Egg Story?
This blog post brought me back to a philosophy class debate in college – what came first, the chicken or the egg? I don’t even remember all these years later which side of the debate I was assigned to! I suppose if we had the same debate in a science class as opposed to a philosophy class, the outcome might have been that eggs most certainly came before chickens, but chicken eggs did not. Regardless, at the end of the debate – either philosophical or scientific – it’s clear that you can’t have one without the other.
The same holds true with culture and compliance; you can’t really have one without the other. The real question is precedence. Some fall on the side of managing culture through compliance, others fall on relying on culture to sustain compliance.
So, Compliance or Culture?
If you start managing culture first, you will make certain values very prominent. Those can vary widely between companies, industries, and even locations. Most would include accountability, inclusivity, transparency, putting the “customer first,” honesty, and similar virtues. If you have grown a culture around values like these, then adding policies to codify them is an easy transition.
A compliance-first approach is perceived as very regimented – “Here’s the rules and you WILL follow them!” – all the while hoping the culture evolves to be accepting and supporting of them.
Let’s consider some of the headwinds that compliance and HR professionals are facing right now and how a culture-first or compliance-first approach would fare. Take mask mandates for example. If your culture has evolved to an others-above-self culture, then a mask mandate may be welcomed by most. However, if the mandate comes from on high, and there is no cultural foundation to support its ready acceptance, you should expect resistance.
So what’s the answer?
The best approach is in the middle. Let’s evolve culture with purpose and let’s consider culture when we make policy. This will not happen by accident; it must be intentional. Here’s a few tips to help make your culture purposeful as you build policies at the same time:
Priorities. Lots of factors drive prioritization, including changing laws and standards. Don’t be guilty of placing the same priority on a policy of lesser significance and potentially more pushback as opposed to a policy of great significance and more universal acceptance.
Encourage and advocate for culture. The most successful companies in this regard have cross-functional groups work together to define cultural standards. A company I worked for decades ago had three simple rules that defined our culture: we treat others as we would like to be treated, partnership with our clients results in superior products, and team success is more important than personal glory. These rules were driven by employees and a copy was on everyone’s desk. In fact, it still sits on mine almost thirty years later.
Every policy we had could ultimately be tied back to one of those “Elements of Excellence” and because we all accepted the culture – in fact thrived in it – the policies simply codified the culture.
Amazingly, every time I run into one of my peers from that time, we all universally agree that we never worked anywhere else with the same commitment to culture.
Enforce the rules. Having policies only really matters if your company chooses to enforce them consistently and without any bias. Let’s face facts, many if not most policies that companies have in place intend to encourage compliant behavior that keeps companies from running afoul of the law. That’s the importance and the heart of compliance. When we have a policy that is selectively enforced, it’s tough to find a virtuous element of culture that supports elective enforcement. Policy diverges from culture and there is conflict. When there is conflict because of culture and compliance, there are no winners.
I’ll leave you with a final thought – if you can’t succinctly define your company’s culture, then you have some work to do. If you have issues with employee resistance to policy, see the first point above.
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MEET THE AUTHOR
J Rollins is the co-founder and CEO of ETHIX360. J is a well known leader and innovator who has served on senior leadership teams ranging in responsibility from Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, SVP of Product Strategy and Chief Operating Officer.
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