Can we turn our legal and compliance aspirations into reality?

Here’s common scenario I see in the organisations I work with. You’ve crafted your compliance strategy, meticulously inserted data into an excel spreadsheet and you’ve produced a compelling PowerPoint presentation for the leadership team on your implementation plan for that training, policy, system etc. You can see it; you can even feel it.

Cue the music – you’re ready to launch. 

And then the comms team or another team sends an email – you see another launch that coincides with yours. You put yours on hold for a few weeks.  Music fades a little. 

Then key stakeholders want to add in their thoughts and get involved. Your vision has been slowed down considerably. Music fades entirely.

A few months later, you are ready to go again. Your plan is back on track.

But your excitement is not shared by the general population. The launch of the new policy/training/system is met with quiet acknowledgement.

Your vision is not shared.

Visioning for success

Jim Carrey famously shared that he wrote himself a check for $10 million for “acting services rendered” and dated it for several years in the future. I think we all know what happened!

And many other influential leaders and artists—Deepak Chopra, Katy Perry and the queen of talk show hosts, Oprah, share about vision boarding.

Vision boarding is essentially setting and visualising your intention in a place where you constantly seeing it, on the premise that you will then take active steps toward making that abstract idea come to fruition.

Diving into the Science and Psychology of Vision Boarding: Four Ways Vision Boards Change our Brain

But vision boarding is more than visioning your ideas. When you set out your vision you are actually tapping into powerful psychological and neurological mechanisms that drive success.

1. Lights up positive brain regions: Neuroscience tells us that vividly imagining your goals activates brain regions linked to motivation and goal pursuit. It’s like giving your brain a roadmap to success!

2. Turbocharge goal setting. By translating your dreams into visual representations, you’re making the goals tangible and achievable. Research shows that setting specific, measurable, and time-bound goals (a.k.a. SMART goals) boosts motivation and performance. Your vision board becomes your personal cheerleader, cheering you on towards victory.

3. Priming your mind for success: It’s the Law of Attraction- the idea that positive thoughts attract positive outcomes! Studies suggest that optimism and positive beliefs prime the mind for success, cultivating a mindset of abundance and possibility.

4. CBT: Vision boarding also taps into cognitive-behavioral principles, the backbone of therapy that rewires negative thought patterns. You’re essentially rewiring the brain for success.

So how can we use this with our compliance programs to harness the collective power of psychology and neuroscience to turn your compliance aspirations into reality?

Simple – we need to move from individual to collective visioning. 

Collective Visioning

Collective visioning can foster a sense of connection and commitment to shared goals.  Imagine if others in the organisation could see your vision in the way that you do

• A whistleblowing program is an opportunity to give and capture feedback – which will improve our work environment.
• A new ABAC policy allows us to do more business in high-risk locations as we know the boundaries.
• A Supplier Code of Conduct means less time negotiating contract terms as all the material is in the Code, and therefore higher volumes of onboarding.
• New Data Privacy policy and training allows us to run more marketing campaigns and get more information from customers so long as we know and follow the rules.
• Generative AI training explains what the guardrails are, allowing us to utilise GenAI internally to speed up our work.

Imagine visualising the positive outcomes of compliance for everyone to see in one easy to see place?

• Better work environment
• Develop our business and access a larger customer base
• Quicker turnaround time for onboarding suppliers and getting new products to market
• Carry out more targeted marketing campaigns

Ethics in Focus: Vision Boarding Workshops

Vision Boarding can used as an important and useful tool to encourage teams to clarify and visualise their personal and work goals and combine these with ethics and compliance to promote focused action and accountability.

Imagine running a workshop where you did that!

Teams can use vision boarding to consider the ethical implications of their goals and aspirations.

By encouraging teams to integrate ethical considerations into the vision boarding process, individuals can cultivate a heightened awareness of the ethical implications of their work.

Ultimately, vision boarding can serve as a platform for open dialogue between the business and compliance/ethics/legal teams about shared goals, values, and the importance of ethical conduct in achieving them.

Mindfulness and compliance – the future

As I am on the topic of vision boarding, I couldn’t help but consider mindfulness for compliance success.

Why not integrate mindfulness practices into compliance and ethics training programs to enhance their effectiveness?

By incorporating mindfulness exercises, such as guided meditations or reflective practices, perhaps we can help employees develop the self-awareness and emotional intelligence necessary for ethical decision-making and compliance with policies, laws and regulations.

I’m just saying….

Over to you

If you are interested in running a vision boarding workshop in your organisation, contact me nicole@untoldcompliance.com or click here to get into contact.

Nicole Rose