Situational Compliance - What's That?

by Connie Nelson

Many of us are familiar with the theory of “Situational Leadership™ [1].” The model dates back to the 1960's and asks leaders to adapt their personal styles to fit a broad range of individual and team situations.  Since its introduction, the model's been extended to parenting, selling, and service.

Now, let me be the first to state that I see a 'situational compliance' trend emerging among compliance functions.  What do I mean by that?  First some definitions of terms. The Public Strategies Group uses "compliers" to denote those people or businesses that are expected to meet a law or standard to fulfill an obligation.  "Compliance functions" are the regulatory or enforcement arms of government that are charged with getting people to adhere to these standards.  Examples of compliance functions range from tax agencies to OSHA to internal personnel management.  Most try to earn voluntary compliance through the issuance of written policy and guidelines, but failing that, use enforcement techniques such as oversight, fines or sanctions.

The new trend I see is that, rather than treating compliers with this  "one size fits all" approach, some compliance functions are working to treat their compliers differently - depending on their compliers' situation. 

Let's look at one especially "cool client" example.  It is a Midwestern state's child support enforcement program.  The purpose of the program is to produce 100% compliance with parental responsibilities for child support.  In the past, the only tools the agency used to garner this compliance were enforcement techniques, such as wage garnishment and even jail time.  While they enjoyed high levels of compliance when compared to their neighboring states, our client felt they could do even better by stepping back to rethink the way they did business.

Using our company's design lab methodology, this client redesigned the strategy underlying their system.  The revised system has more capacity to adapt its responses in order to facilitate parental financial support of their child (ren). The new design is adaptive because it acknowledges differences among parents.  In the new design, each must still pay what is expected for their child's support, but the system is capable of tailoring its responses in order to obtain or increase their compliance.  And it saves the strictest tools of enforcement for the few that require it.

The breakthrough in the design process came when the designers were asked to walk in the non-custodial parents' shoes - and understand why the non-custodial parent was or was not complying.  From this experience, they identified five most common situations:

• The parent who is willing and able to comply
• The parent who is willing, but unable to pay
• The parent who is uninformed that they need to comply
• The parent who is able to pay, but unwilling to do so
• The intentional evader - able to pay, but actively evading the law

The designers then designed what they wanted the system's response to be in each situation.  The strategy for the new system is more tailored, as follows:

This client believes this is the first design that starts with the parent's point of view.  Not all elements are being implemented, but one of the first things that did change was the way that people inside the system talked about non-custodial parents.  Immediately, broad-brush terms such as 'deadbeat dads' were less frequently used.  And, as they presented the design to others, our client says that this work "helped introduce new language into the national lexicon" - and altered the discussion on child support enforcement. 

I thought this 'situational compliance' model might be applicable beyond child support enforcement.  Let me know if it triggers some thoughts regarding your work.