Time to Poka-Yoke Your Compliance

By Raimund Laqua, Lean Compliance Engineer

Mistakes aren't failures—they’re lessons.

You see this quote everywhere. LinkedIn. Motivational posters. Team meetings. It sounds wise until you work in compliance.

Because when compliance engineers make mistakes, people die.

The Problem with Mistake Worship

The Challenger explosion. Boeing's 737 MAX crashes. The 2008 financial meltdown. These weren't "learning opportunities"—they were preventable disasters where someone's mistake became everyone else's tragedy.

I've watched too many post-incident reviews where we nod solemnly, update our procedures, and promise to "learn from this." But learning from mistakes is fundamentally reactive. We're saying: "Let's fail first, then get better."

What if we didn't have to fail at all?

Poka-Yoke: From Mistake-Proofing to Promise-Keeping

In LEAN management, there's a concept called Poka-Yoke—traditionally defined as mistake-proofing. But I prefer to think of it as engineering processes where obligations will always be met and promises kept. Instead of training people to be perfect, you design systems that reliably help organizations deliver on commitments.

Think about USB-C cables. You can't plug them in wrong because there is no wrong way. The connection is engineered to work every time.

Now apply this to compliance.

Engineering Reliable Delivery

Build obligation fulfillment into the process. If safety inspections must happen before equipment startup, don't rely only on procedures—make startup electronically impossible without all the essential safety processes in place and operational.

Engineer commitment keeping. Your car won't start without a seatbelt. Your procurement system shouldn't approve purchases without environmental assessments.

Design continuous assurance. Don't wait for quarterly audits to verify compliance. Build systems that provide real-time confirmation—dashboards that show obligation status, alerts that trigger before deadlines, processes that maintain compliance automatically.

The key insight: engineer systems where keeping promises is the natural outcome, even when people are stressed and rushing.

When Prevention Fails

Even perfect systems have failures. But Poka-Yoke isn't just about prevention—it's about rapid detection. Fail small and fast before small problems become big disasters.

Manufacturing uses statistical process control to catch deviations immediately. Compliance needs similar real-time monitoring. Not quarterly reports or yearly audits—constant visibility into drift before it becomes non-compliance.

Stop Blaming People, Start Fixing Systems

When compliance fails, we ask "Who screwed up?" Better question: "What in our system allowed this to happen?"

Individual blame misses the point. In complex systems, human error is usually a symptom of poor design. Fix the system, and you fix the error.

The Reality Check

Perfect systems don't exist. People will always find workarounds when pressured. But that's exactly why we need Poka-Yoke thinking—design for the humans you have, not the perfect humans you wish you had.

Stop celebrating your ability to learn from mistakes. Start celebrating your ability to prevent them.

The best lesson is the one you never have to learn the hard way.

---

Raimund Laqua is a Lean Compliance Engineer focused on applying operational and lean principles to operationalizing regulatory and voluntary obligations.