'Not Technically Feasible'

My agile journey started 20 years ago at a digital startup, where I was hired to do account management. Because I spoke to customers the most, I was eventually named the product owner and left to get on with working out what that strange new job title actually meant. I honestly had no idea.

Often though, after talking to customers, I’d come up with what I thought were great ideas for new features and products, and take them to our lead developer for consideration, only to be told that they ‘weren’t technically feasible’. This was always a trump card when it came to getting the feature delivered, as saying it wasn't 'technically feasible' meant that however good I thought the idea was, it could never actually be implemented.

This went on for a while, until one evening, after a good long while in the pub, the lead developer finally admitted to me that when they said an idea ‘wasn’t technically feasible’, it actually meant they just didn’t want to work on it. Perhaps it was too difficult, perhaps it broke some other feature that they quite liked, perhaps it altered their work flow, perhaps they just thought it was a silly idea (like the time I wanted to put the system login screen at a URL ending in '/bernard'), perhaps sometimes it really was just not technically feasible. Whatever the reason, 'not technically feasible' meant a dead end to my ideas.

So what has any of this got to do with regulatory agility?

Well, replace ‘not technically feasible’ with ‘the regulator / compliance / risk / legal won’t like that’, and you get a phenomenon that is taking place day in and day out across many large organisations. Regulatory concerns, and the people that oversee them, become the ultimate trump card for stopping anything anyone doesn't like or doesn't want to happen. After all, being found guilty of a regulatory breach can take away your annual bonus, or even your job, and with it your means of feeding your kids.

No wonder people are so scared of 'the regulator won't like that', and so, especially in political environments, use it as a way of shutting ideas or people down.

There are two real tragedies that sit behind this phenomenon.

There first is that often this external critique of ideas often becomes internalised within people, to the point they start second guessing what the regulatory objections to ideas might be, and shut the idea down themselves before it even leaves their head. How can you expect to have a culture of innovation within an organisation when people are being taught to self-censor any new idea? How do you deliver ever greater value when conversations that should be based on 'Yes, and...' become 'No, because...'?

The second tragedy is that often this assumption that 'the regulator won't like that' is actually based on an entirely false premise. In one organisation I worked at, the mantra was continually that 'Compliance won't let us do that' whenever any new interesting idea was suggested. Eventually I became so frustrated with this that I invited a compliance representative to one of the many 'sign off calls' that were held to review what was being delivered. However, this was the days before video conferencing, so it literally was a group phonecall, where you only knew someone was there if they actually spoke. As a result, I didn't tell anyone I was inviting a real compliance person to the call, to see what would happen.

The first item came up for review, and as standard, someone said "We can't do that, compliance won't like it". At which point the compliance person spoke up and said "Actually, I really like that. It's pushing the boundaries of what we're doing in this space, it's not breaking any regulations, and I think customers will find it really helpful". After a surprised silence, the work was signed off, and the next piece was reviewed. Again, the compliance person spoke up and said they liked it, and so on and so on. By the end of the call, everything had been signed off, with only ever minor tweaks and changes at most.

The lesson in this for me was not just that people had internalised a fictional inner critic in the form of 'compliance' that didn't in reality exist, but also that the people held up as the reason why things can't happen actually want to see interesting, innovative new ideas get delivered for an organisation just as much as anyone else does. Often they're sat there frustrated that new ideas aren't being brought forward, possibly unaware that they are being cited as the reason why they can't be.

For me then, achieving agility in the regulatory space requires bringing together the people involved in overseeing regulations with the people delivering the work, so each side can actually understand the other, and begin to realise that they actually have shared goals.

If you recognise any of these issues, why not reach out to one of your imagined 'regulatory critics' today and arrange to meet them for a coffee and a chat? You might be surprised by how quickly it can change your world.