As the chief compliance officer in your organization, you have the opportunity to take your team from contributors to leaders. It’s all in the way you choose to approach your role and the way you position your team within the organization.
We’ve outlined four key areas where a chief compliance can focus to make an impact on their organization. It’s not a “pick one” situation. Instead, the best chief compliance officers will unite several of these areas to make a strong impact on their organization and to position the entire compliance team as a key factor in the organization’s success.
If you’re just starting to build your sphere of influence, you might consider choosing one of these spaces and focusing your efforts there, then expanding as your relationships, strategic vision and capabilities expand.
Instead, they’re constantly scanning the horizon, looking for ways to position compliance as a strategic advantage for the organization. For example, they:
They cross-train their staff and offer the ability for other teams to send their people to compliance for training. They are clear and transparent about processes and decision-making.
Their approach is collaborative. Instead of issuing dictates about the way compliance efforts run, they ensure collaboration and make sure there’s inherent value in the partnerships they build.
Business leaders already think processes run slowly and are wary of consensus decision-making because of the way it can bog down the implementation of new efforts. The role of a relationship-building CCO is to ensure their knowledge is so valued and their voice so trusted that other business professionals rely on their voice and perspective for decision making and strategic planning.
Relationship builders can start connecting throughout the organization by offering audits.
If that word automatically sets off red flags within the organization, position it as a means of optimizing departmental efforts. Every leader wants to optimize their team’s work so they can perform better and can see the impact their efforts are making.
The tech adopter CCO can also be a bit of a tech enthusiast. They educate themselves on the opportunities that exist and they approach new tech resources with curiosity rather than with trepidation.
In the past, CCOs may have felt some discomfort with the idea of heavily investing in compliance technology, lest they put themselves and their team members out of a job. However, today’s CCOs recognize the potential for regtech tools to improve their compliance processes. Bringing technology into compliance can:
By bringing a diverse group together in the compliance department, you have a greater likelihood of covering and addressing issues as they arise rather than being surprised by something outside your team’s collective knowledge.
A CCO who wants to lead as an ethics guardian isn’t a stern arbiter of right and wrong within the organization. Instead, they’re an educator and culture builder, infusing a commitment to ethics and compliance into every aspect of the organization’s business model.
Stepping up as an ethics guardian can be one of the more challenging methods of being a compliance leader. It requires asking:
When you’re leading a compliance team, you have more than your department on your shoulders. The way you integrate compliance into the organization will have a lasting impact on the business’s success. And, critically, forging a path forward as a compliance leader means that you can position your compliance function as a strategic and competitive advantage, rather than as a cost center.
Ready to begin shifting your compliance efforts to create greater strategic value? Here’s how we can help: