The Creativity Suite. Episode 155: Compliance Innovation.
Interview with Cassandra Moons, Legal Director Privacy, Product and Corporate Compliance and Data Protection Officer at TomTom.
Few would put the two words “compliance” and “innovation” next to each other. At least without putting a “v.s.” in-between.
But compliance doesn’t have to be an enemy of innovation. In fact, it can be a catalyst for it.
But only if you have the right mindset.
One person who has that right mindset is Cassandra Moons, Legal Director Privacy, Product and Corporate Compliance and Data Protection Officer at TomTom, the digital maps and location technology company.
She estimates that 90% of compliance officers are, what she calls, “police officers”. People who think that “compliance” means to “act in accordance with a wish or command.”
And, ok, technically, that is what “compliance” means.
But the job of compliance is very different from the word compliance.
Or at least it can be.
Cassandra is one of the proposers of compliance (the job) as an active, creative role of finding new and exciting business opportunities that could reveal themselves when new regulations are being introduced.
New regulation, per definition, means that something in the market is changing, and when something in a market changes, new opportunities can arise.
Cassandra also empathises the role of compliance (the job) to introduce new rules and regulations in a way that inspires the rest of the company instead of making them see these new rules as “necessary evils” or worse.
Cassandra: “It’s about not presenting (new compliance rules) as “this is what you have to do”, but as “how could this work for our company?” When you look at it that way you get more freedom. You feel that you are in charge.”
Just because most people hear “follow a command” when they hear “compliance” doesn’t mean you have to. You can also look at it as an invitation to innovate around this new legislation.
The etymology of the word “compliance” is actually more inviting than the current meaning. The Latin word *complire” comes from “complere meaning “to fill up,” as in “fulfill, finish a task”.
Compliance does mean that you have to comply with a new rule or law, but HOW you choose to approach this task to fulfil it is totally up to you.
You can take the lazy and uncreative way out and just implement the changes you need to make.
Or you can take a creative and an innovative approach and use these regulated changes to identify new market opportunities, challenge your old business practices and foresee future changes.
It’s up to you.
I asked Cassandra: “If 90% of compliance officers are just “police officers” making sure that new regulations are being implemented, what should we call the last 10% who use these changes as a catalyst for change?”
She replied in a second: “Compliance Innovators!”
Is your compliance officer a “compliance innovator”?
Is your company using compliance as a way to trigger innovation or as a way of killing it?
18
Apr