𝘿𝙤𝙣’𝙩 𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙤 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪’𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙙𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛.

A few weeks ago, a client shared a concern with me. 

The auditors were consistently uncovering issues that, in his view, should have been flagged by his risk and compliance team.

Frustrated, he planned to call a meeting to push his team to identify more issues.

I suggested a different way of framing the problem.

It wasn’t that his team was missing these issues; they just weren’t reporting them.

If non-reporting was widespread, the root of the problem was likely in the process itself — not the people.

Maybe reporting was cumbersome, or perhaps there was little incentive to do so.

Simply instructing his team to report more probably wouldn’t fix the underlying issue.

So, I asked him, “𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦? 𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴?”

I knew the answer already — he hadn’t.

Senior leaders rarely do, which means they lack both firsthand experience and credibility when asking others to report.

He admitted as much, having no idea what the process involved.

So, we set out to change that and identified something meaningful in his domain for him to report.

This gave him a firsthand look at the process and potential pain points.

Then, when he spoke to his team, he could share his own experience, discuss what he did to streamline the process and lead by example.

[In case you're wondering, yes, the client is OK with me sharing the story on an anonymised basis; he thinks it might help someone else to solve the same problem]