Every organization operates in the presence of uncertainty from the board room to the front line. This uncertainty creates the opportunity for risk where companies are often only one recall, one explosion, or one violation away from losing their regulatory license, or as importantly their social license to operate.

Unfortunately up until now, defenses have been primarily based on reactive behaviors across disparate siloes creating significant gaps in coverage and the propagation of risk throughout their organization.

To succeed companies must implement compliance programs that work together to form lines of protection to prevent threats from materializing and mitigate the effects when they do. In this way companies can increase the probability of mission success resulting in the reduction of risk, meeting obligations, and increased stakeholder trust.

Will your current defenses hold and if not, what can you do to strengthen them?

Raimund Laqua is founder and Chief Compliance Engineer at Lean Compliance Consulting, Inc. His focus is helping ethical, ambitious companies in highly-regulated, high-risk industries improve the effectiveness of their compliance programs covering safety & security, quality, regulatory and environmental objectives.