I was hired on what I though would be a stop-gap assignment. My client was struggling with some significant audit non-compliances on its operations. I was hired to quickly write some documents to hand to the auditors.

Compliance review

With no prior knowledge of the company or the sector of business, I had to dig into many new topics and technologies. As a result it was clear that the organisation was performing basic operations correctly, but it was sporadic and not standardized. I highlighted that just having a document in place does not mean that it is used or implemented. As a result I was asked to oversee the use of a corporate tool to review and report compliance to corporate standards.

My first trials with the tool were not efficient and I reported to senior management that the workload to make the full portfolio compliant in the corporate tool would require far more resources and take multiple years. Although senior management was not happy with the result, the programme would continue, but I was told to find an “alternative solution”.

I went back to the corporate standards and built a new process from the ground up that was given the green light by the corporate internal audit programme. The senior management backed the plan and with additional resources we succeeded in completing the assessment of the whole portfolio of operations in less than half the time originally forecast. Not only were we now one of the most compliant divisions in the organisation, we also succeeded in getting an ISO certificate of compliance. We are the first division in the organisation to achieve this ISO certification and our senior management are extremely proud of the fact.

Fresh eyes

By coming into a situation with fresh eyes, I was able to take a step back and analyse what was the purpose of the project and set appropriate goals. When everyone is aligned on the correct goals, we can overachieve the requirements.