Air Traffic Control and Regulatory Affairs

The power of a metaphor is that it guides thinking about problems. A recent string of meetings with some client companies' regs groups got me thinking about metaphors in regulatory compliance. In these meetings there was too much "you can't" and not enough "here's how you can", and when there was how-to, it assumed the most complicated instead of the most direct.

I think that most regulatory people have a guiding metaphor of being building inspectors in an company's planning, responsible for enforcement, listing what has to be done, and dictating the requirements before they will allow something to proceed to the next step.

I would like to propose that being responsible for saying "Stop!" is not beneficial to the success of either the group or the individual. A better metaphor would be air traffic control. Regulatory is responsible for making sure that we can get to our destination by the most expeditious route without disaster.

In this throught process, the responsibility is not to say "Stop" but to say "Hold till runway clear.... OK, permission for takeoff!" This turns a negative and prescriptive way of thinking into a positive 'flight checklist' attitude. I've commented in the past about the difference between normal regulatory ("the requirements for a 510(k) filing are ... .") compared to strategic regulatory ("the best path through the 510(k) is ... ."). I think the strategic regulatory folks are thinking about their contribution differently, which is why they operate differently.

In closing, though, I think the folks who are thinking strategically are getting a lot more satisfaction in their work. Figuring out a fast and effective way to solve a problem is a lot more fun than making a list of every possible thing that must be done (at least, I hope that's the case). So if you are working *in* Regs or *with* Regs, think about the metaphor. With the right metaphor you can fly, but with the wrong one you're just stuck in traffic.