How can we change the culture of compliance in our organization? That was the question a senior compliance leader came to us with in 2017. Over the next 3 years, we worked closely with her to design and facilitate a series of six 2-day meetings to engage a 40-person compliance community of practice from across the organization in answering this question together.

The initial workshop was designed to help the group build an identity as a community of practice, understand the current culture through storytelling and data analysis, and envision a new “culture of positivity.” Future workshops focused on:

• Building the community of practice

• Orienting new members to the vision (since membership rotated)

• Monitoring change in the culture (checking the pulse of the organization)

• Creating a playbook for culture change

• Building strategic storytelling skills

• Prototyping solutions to compliance challenges

• Sharing stories of success

• Building a growth mindset

• Aligning the culture change work to a broader agile transformation

We used a highly visual approach to facilitate all of the workshops that included a blend of:

• Creative icebreaker activities that got the group moving, talking and connecting

• Large, hand-illustrated agendas to keep people focused

• Customized visual templates to support effective table work

• Live graphic recording during presentations by senior leaders so that the group could see the key themes and messages throughout the meeting

• Large-scale interactive graphics to get real-time feedback from the group and help them see what was occurring in the system

• Post-it note and other visual collaboration activities to generate insights and action

As a result of the our work together and other policy changes, the culture of compliance in the organization became substantially more positive and engagement and pride in the community of practice grew.

At the final meeting, participants shared dramatic stories of how compliance had shifted from a box to check to become a driver of innovation and new customer solutions.