By Adam Turteltaub
adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org
There’s a surprising new street scene going on in Sweden. What’s surprising about it is that it’s all designed for mice.
A group of artists, who go by the name Anonymouse, have built a series of storefronts that are mouse-sized and themed. There are shops and a café, and even a bit of street art in their street art that seems to pay homage to Banksy. You can read more about this fun little adventure here and here.
Their work is a good reminder of two things to consider. First, sometimes something small can have a much bigger impact than much larger efforts. Second, if you capture people’s hearts and imaginations, you can get their attention.
Now, you may think that’s hard to do in compliance, and I’m not doubting that most compliance officers are less popular than artists who create cityscapes for mice. But, it doesn’t mean we can’t use some of the same thinking.
Imagine if one day you left little tiny toy phones all around the offices: on random desks, in the cafeteria, break rooms, on top of the watercoolers, around the warehouse, and even on the counters in the bathroom. No note, no explanation. By the end of the day, the whole office would be talking about it. Then, imagine if the next day you sent out an email with a photo of the toy phones saying “You don’t always see it, but the company hotline is always there if you have questions, concerns or see something unusual.” My bet is that the email will get a lot more attention, generate discussion and people will think a lot better about the compliance department.
Or, maybe, if you have a big cafeteria, you set up a cubicle in the middle of it one day and hire someone to spend lunch time in there “working” away. If anyone asks “who are you?” or “what are you doing?” have the person respond, “I’m too busy right now to talk. Come back later.”
Guaranteed that the company would be talking about it.
An email that afternoon about the need to be willing to listen to colleague concerns would suddenly resonate.
Or given that data breaches, according to our most recent survey, are more likely to come from lost devices and papers, borrow some old laptops from the IT department, and scatter them around the office in places where someone might have accidentally left them – on top of file cabinets, under a chair in the lunch room – with a note on them saying, “This laptop was “lost” here on purpose but lost laptops and devices are a top data risk for the company. Be sure to safeguard company information.”
While these specific ideas may not work for your organization, the bigger idea here is to think a little differently about the message, to involve people, surprise them, and maybe make them smile and wonder.
If you do that, you’ll get them talking, thinking, and hopefully will prevent a few compliance and ethics failures.
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