Everything flows, and so must compliance.
Compliance cannot stay the same; it must continually improve, but as importantly, it must continually innovate.
These forces help define the difference between compliance programs and compliance systems:
Compliance Programs introduce change to achieve better outcomes. Innovation is characterized by creating potential, introducing novelty, and exploiting opportunities on objectives (positive risk) – Pro-activity.
Compliance Systems resist change to achieve greater consistency. Improvement is characterized by closing of gaps, reduction in variation, and ameliorating threats on objectives (negative risk) – Re-activity.
While compliance needs both, the emphasis today is on the building of systems without the benefit of a program. It's no wonder why compliance has struggled to measure, let alone achieve, effectiveness.
Without programs, compliance does not have the context or the conditions for compliance systems to know what and how to improve to achieve better outcomes.
To achieve compliance success in the year ahead ensure you have an operational compliance program to help guide and steer your systems towards higher standards.