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When we tell someone about Drama for Change, our system for changing organisational culture, the applications that come to mind are usually interpersonal issues such as diversity and inclusion or safeguarding. And while Drama for Change can make an impact there, I’m perhaps more excited by its impact on compliance matters.
Drama for Change
To remind you – Drama for Change takes a workplace issue, explores it with focus groups and uses the outputs to inform video scripts. The videos dramatise difficult decisions people regularly face around an issue, pushing them to an extreme. Viewers are immediately involved with the problem and even start trying to solve it. This energy is boosted by a campaign to get people talking about the videos. Drama for Change engages large teams in constructive conversation about difficult issues that are usually ignored. New behaviours develop.
IT Compliance
With some issues, it doesn’t matter how hard you push; there is always some resistance. This is when a compliance issue becomes a behavioural issue. What stories are people telling themselves to justify non-compliance? In what circumstances would someone be tempted to break the IT compliance rules to achieve something for their team? Getting quick access to some vital information through a forbidden channel, perhaps? Information for a bid via a personal email? Bringing grey area behaviours into the open allows your teams to discuss their everyday challenges, putting immense focus on an issue and leaving you with a changed mindset and a bunch of behavioural-boosting tools.
Integrity
Professional behaviour in public settings: What is secret? What are you forbidden from sharing about your employer for legal reasons? Current contracts, client details, research and development, are all subjects that would be best not discussed with industry colleagues from other organisations. But what do you do when you meet a former colleague at an industry conference who asks you what you’re up to now, and before you know it, you’ve let out a sliver more info than you should have? It can be socially awkward to stop the conversation suddenly. This could all be quite innocent, or you could be prey for a skilled manipulator.
Playing out scenes like this in a drama allows people to think themselves into the problem and to mentally rehearse and prepare so they don’t find themselves in such a spot. The campaign element of Drama for Change serves to amplify the discussion – widening it from what’s been in the video to thought and discussion all around the topic. Talking about “what you saw on TV” and sharing opinions is fun. In the process, moral and behavioural norms are forged. Compliance gets easier.
Financial pressures
The financial sector is notorious for the long hours it demands from its highfliers. The pressures can be immense. And we know that decision-making ability can be negatively impacted under stress. Research shows stress can affect decision-making with narrow attention spans, inhibited memory, increased distraction and therefore weakened logic and rationality. The stakes can be incredibly high, and errors can affect the bottom-line big time.
Trends suggest that the long-hours culture itself will be challenged in the long term. In the meantime, dramatizing the pressures that cause people to make wrong choices – showcasing familiar mistakes and near misses in a short drama and stimulating conversation about it – is a great way to make people more mindful of when to take a step back and resist the pressure.
Who’s in the driving seat?
Another way to look at this is to think of compliance in the public realm. We all know that speeding is against the law, but according to The Department for Transport, as many as 87% of British drivers have broken the speed limit. People tell themselves stories to ‘rationalise’ this behaviour. You might believe that the appropriate driving speed should be determined by the road conditions you are driving on, not an ‘arbitrary’ number on a sign. Thus, speeding is deemed a rational behaviour. And by chatting with supportive friends to reinforce the position, this non-compliant behaviour is deemed within acceptable moral boundaries.
Going head-on at people’s personal belief systems never works, and drama provides a way to open this up.
A public information advertisement is released. It shows a mother who, late to collect her child from school, drives too fast. A car pulls out, her stop time is compromised, and a collision is narrowly missed. The child might have lost a parent.
The ad gets people thinking and talking. TV discussions about the campaign pop up. DJs have a phone-in. This is essentially the same structure as a Drama for Change campaign, but our messaging can be better targeted because we are targeting a narrower audience.
How can Drama for Change effectively address organisational compliance issues and foster a culture of integrity and ethical decision-making in your context?
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