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In the past few weeks I've crossed into/out of Germany by train from Brussels, Paris, Warsaw and Vienna. Last night it was Amsterdam and Zurich is up next. That'll make six of Germany's nine land borders by train. Rail campaigner Jon Worth, who has crossed far more borders by train than I ever will, was in Brussels at the same time last week, so we compared notes. Our experiences were similar. Sometimes police board the train and check everyone's documents. Sometimes there ar

Mine is all about rules. Now I'm inviting people to break them. When Humanizing Rules was published, I had surprisingly little say over what went on the cover. Publishers have rules, too. Which is rather ironic, given the subject of the book. So I've decided to give readers something I didn't have; control. I wanted to create my own cover. But then I realised that if you take off the dust jacket, there's a blank canvas just waiting to be used. I've created a set of stickers t

Looking for Compliance In The Wild. I'm researching a keynote, and it turns out a 15th-century printer has lots to teach us about rules. Nobody knows what Johannes Gutenberg looked like. The man who made it possible for all of us to publish left no portrait from his lifetime. Every image of him is guesswork, created after he died. So the museum has solved the problem: you get to be him. But it wasn't the only gap I found. His famous Bibles were printed only in black, with spa

FAFO - Fuck Around and Find Out — is usually a warning. Do something 'stupid' and discover the consequences. But I think it deserves a more positive interpretation. When I worked in the corporate world, I was required to spend an awful lot of time doing things where I already knew what the outcome would be: Groundhog Day meetings, 'sheep dip' training that ticked a box but changed nothing, and consultations where the decisions had effectively already been made. And the irony

No particular reason. I was passing and felt like going in. At school, I was made to feel that art wasn’t for me. I wasn’t good at it, so why bother? Looking at you, Mrs Hollow. But yesterday, I spent 45 minutes happily wandering around, eventually emerging with an eclectic collection of pens, paper, stamps and the biggest marker pen I’ve ever seen. None of it makes much sense. I have no particular project in mind and there's no obvious business case. But that’s the point. I’

Recently, I've kept having repeat versions of the same conversation. When someone hears what I do, they proudly tell me their solution to the problem I help solve. 'My team is very compliant; we get the training done as soon as it’s sent out.' Or, 'My assistant sends everyone daily reminders until they do the training.' It sounds good, and I understand the logic; complete the exercise and you’re off the naughty step. But there’s something odd — dishonest, even — about giving

Today I'm between visits to the Wiesn (what Munich locals call Oktoberfest, after the Theresienwiese where it's held). I've become fascinated by one ritual there: 𝗘𝗶𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁. If you've been inside one of the beer tents, you'll know it. The band strikes up a familiar tune. Conversations stop, glasses go up, everyone sings. Then comes the cue: "𝘖𝘢𝘯𝘴, 𝘻𝘸𝘰𝘢, 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘪, 𝘨'𝘴𝘶𝘧𝘧𝘢!" One, two, three, drink. You don't have to drink, but most people do. Behavioura

A lesson in 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻 𝗵𝘆𝗽𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘆. This week, I got annoyed at someone who’d written a post inviting discussion, then showed no interest in having one with anyone who wasn't a cheerleader. Partly because I’d spent longer than I should have thinking about their argument. And having written a considered reply, being ignored felt irritating. Then it struck me that I sometimes do exactly the same thing. Not because I’m not interested, but because a comment has reall

This week, I received a series of emails from a booking agency offering me...wait for it... 𝘶𝘱 𝘵𝘰 $120 to interview one of their clients on the Human Risk podcast. I find the implied economics of this fascinating. As anyone who has produced a podcast knows, recording episodes is only part of the overall work; research, preparation, editing, production and packaging all take additional time. Why a pod agency would knowingly anchor their client to the bargain end of the mar

I’d been talking about human decision-making and, in particular, how we focus our attention on the things we think are relevant. Which means we can completely miss other things going on around us. After my session, there was a second speaker before we came back together for Q&A. Since my camera was going to be off while they were speaking, I thought I’d run a tiny experiment. I changed my shirt; from a light blue work shirt to a black polo shirt. Then I switched my camera bac

In 2018, in a bar in Hamburg, a professor told me not to do a PhD. Not because he thought I couldn't do it. Quite the opposite; he just didn't think it was me. At the time, I thought a PhD was what I needed: credentials, credibility, the right to be taken seriously and, if I'm honest, a title. But none of that is the same as actually wanting to spend years doing a PhD. A few weeks ago, I read Christian O'Connell's 𝘜𝘯𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘈𝘤𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨

Someone said something to me recently that I've been thinking about ever since. 'You hide.' He was talking partly about how I show up online; the Lego-style characters I use here instead of pictures of myself and Railway Reads, where there's literally a book in front of my face. My first reaction was: I don't hide. I'm on stages all the time. I make Compliance In The Wild videos and host a podcast. I'm hardly difficult to find. But it pressed a button he probably didn't know

I don't mean they ignore actual regulations; they're usually on top of those. But to implement the '𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭' rules, they use a second layer of unwritten ones: norms, conventions and assumptions about what a '𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥' compliance programme is supposed to look like. Those unwritten rules help shape the reality of compliance: how, for example, training, communications, policies and controls are designed, and how they actually land. What's odd is that while the written rules are

This week, I arranged a bulk waste collection with my local authority. Being a government agency, there were, of course, rules to follow or they wouldn’t collect. Most were perfectly understandable; everything had to be outside the property, and larger items had to be disassembled so they could be carried easily. For once, I followed the rules. And then wished I hadn't. Because, right at the end of the six-hour collection window, came the inevitable phone call: ‘𝘚𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘺, �

We design a policy, process, system or training programme and assume it should work. When it doesn’t, the people using it are blamed for failing to follow the process, ignoring the training or just not doing what they were told. But perhaps the protocol they failed to follow wasn’t quite as brilliant as its designers thought. Compliance interventions aren’t automatically good simply because their purpose is to reduce risk or ensure rules are followed. They can confuse people

Because my job isn’t to turn compliance professionals into behavioural scientists; it’s to help them think differently about the challenges they already face. That’s something that singles out great compliance teams, too. They’re not trying to turn everyone in the business into compliance experts. They’re trying to embed just enough compliance thinking that people make better decisions when it matters. I think practical Behavioural Science should work the same way. So I’m no

I found myself watching 'Wham! 10 Days in China,' a documentary about their extraordinary 1985 trip to become the first major Western pop group to perform in — you'll never guess where?! — China. I started watching because I like Wham!, but it’s actually full of insights about influencing human behaviour. Touring China made no sense whatsoever from a commercial perspective. But Wham!’s manager realised that doing something no one else had done would generate media attention t

By which I don’t mean more bullshit bureaucracy, tedious training or pointless policies. I mean spending more of its own time doing things that might turn out to be a complete waste of time. Unlike functions with a more obviously creative remit, such as R&D, Sales or Marketing, Compliance is rarely given much room to play; it is somehow expected to get things right first time. Which may explain why so many of its solutions feel familiar. The 'new' e-learning module that feels

I was talking to someone this week who told me they have a ‘𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯, 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵’ policy; introduce a new rule, control or piece of mandatory training, and something else has to go. I like the principle. It recognises that compliance isn't cost-free and that organisations can't keep adding requirements indefinitely. But it also got me thinking. People don't experience the number of rules; they experience the weight of them. One rule might be almost effortless to follow

I'm spending a lot of time getting AI to do my admin. Not the things in my work that require the human touch, but the things that absolutely don't. I don't, for example, want to scour my emails for receipts and upload them into my accounting software. It needs doing, but I add little value by doing it myself and learn nothing from the experience. So I'm investing time now to avoid spending a lot more of it in future doing stuff that bores me. Which raises the interesting ques