Theater

I like a good story. When I think of nights out at a theater, whether cinema or live performance, I think of hours spent together with friends or family and hopefully getting immersed in the magic of great storytelling and atmosphere. That is not the kind of theater that I am considering in this post. Though there is still a type of stage, a performance and an audience, the connotation is usually less than favorable. Let’s begin with a few examples to illustrate what is going on here. There can be tremendous benefit in a strong compliance posture, in that it enables business and can protect the organization from harm. On the other hand, it is compliance theater, if the focus has shifted towards just simply checking off boxes, to adherence to words and specific phrasing, regardless of understanding. Well-chosen metrics can be extremely useful, providing context for measurement and guiding goals for optimization. But blind adherence to and optimization for specific metrics can turn into…