What comes to mind when you read the words ‘compliance review’? Is it a large, looming grey cloud? A gradual feeling of nausea akin to an indescribable sense of impending doom? The image that should come to mind is a game of football.
It’s easy to say we think about compliance in the wrong way. Today I’m going to give you the right way to think about it. And that way is fun. So fun that it’s the world’s most popular sport.
There are countless ways to win a game of football. Some goals are scored from long range; some are scored from sophisticated plays and feints from set-pieces. Some teams sit back and defend, waiting for the opposite team to make a mistake, then charge forward on a counter attack.
Some games are high-scoring, some are a boring slog, with neither team breaking through. But there’s one thing that is always the same and always will be with the beautiful game: every goal that has ever been scored, no matter how extraordinary or ordinary, has been performed within the bounds of the rules (yes, the Hand of God sometimes intervenes; more on that later).
Nobody would say that those rules, and the referees who enforce them, ruin the game; they are precisely the reason why football is worth playing. Pharma hawks will see where I’m going with this: compliance reviewers aren’t in force to get in the way. When they’re properly understood, they permit us to score extraordinary and entertaining victories.
When we don’t think of compliance like this, it’s as if we are still playing football, but doing so in a bizarre fashion. Playing with no regard for the rules means that the game descends into farce.
A commercial midfielder will pick the ball up in the middle of the pitch, run down to the opposition end, sidestep the goalie and throw it into the back of the net and celebrate with his teammates, then complain when the referee says the goal doesn’t stand. A Market Access defender might kneecap the opposition’s striker and shout at the officials about their eyesight when he’s sent off.
Now, this isn’t to say that the officials get it right every time. Every brand manager knows what it’s like when a brand deck comes back with the officials calling ‘foul’ for an infringement they’ve misread. Like Maradona’s famous moment, there are times when we should complain and call in the VAR.
But it should be obvious to even the rowdiest of hooligans that it’s a bit rich to blame the refs for ‘ruining the game’ in general. Those rules, and those who are there to enforce them, are precisely what it means to play the game in the first place.
And what a joy it would be to play the game in this way. No longer would we be frustrated by constant penalties. No longer would we need to direct our ire at the officials when they prevent us from scoring unfairly. We would be given the freedom to play the beautiful game beautifully. We could score better, bigger goals, and more of them, than anyone has before, while the audience cheers us on in the stands.
Want to know how? I heard there’s a panel next week that can show you.
There’s still a couple of tickets left for this year’s Pharmageddon Europe if you fancy a jaunt to Amsterdam next week.
