Building the Space Shuttle (and your compliance processes)
Originally published on LinkedIn on June 23, 2025
This weekend, while watching over my cat during his surgery recovery, I built four LEGO sets: the Space Shuttle Discovery, an orchid, a variety of succulents, and some tiny potted houseplants.
Before you ask, no, I’m not a master builder. I’ve only dabbled in LEGO over the last couple of years. But I love the way LEGO designs and packages their builds. Each step is thoughtful. Each part has its place. Even the instructions have a little progress bar at the bottom so you know how far you’ve come (and how far you still have to go). It’s weirdly comforting.
The space shuttle set had over 2,300 pieces. That sounds overwhelming until you realize you’re never asked to dump all the pieces out and start from a pile. They’re grouped by stage. Each numbered bag builds a small part. Each instruction shows just one step. Piece by piece, you build something remarkable.
And that’s when I started thinking about compliance.
Don’t shove all the pieces at your employees
A lot of compliance functions still operate like this: they give employees a pile of rules, policies, and procedures—and expect them to know how to build the space shuttle from scratch. No staging. No scaffolding. Just, “Here’s the whole thing. Good luck.”
That’s not just inefficient, it’s unfair.
Good compliance design is like a good LEGO manual. It offers employees the next right step, not every step all at once. It breaks down big ideas into small, actionable parts. It uses visuals. It groups related actions together. It creates a sense of momentum and lets people know when they’re making progress.
And it makes it more likely that the final result actually works.
Clear processes are compliance tools
From a compliance perspective, clarity in process design is one of the most underrated forms of risk mitigation.
You know that scene in the compliance investigation where someone says, “Oh, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that”? Yeah. That’s your cue. That’s your opportunity to go upstream and ask, “Did we ever actually show them how?” Not tell. Not link to a policy. Show.
The best processes do more than check a box—they help people do their jobs the right way. They:
Break complex steps into stages
Define roles and responsibilities clearly
Reduce the cognitive load of “figuring it out”
Anticipate bottlenecks and frustration points
Offer visual cues or job aids to reduce errors
Make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing
Bonus points if you make it look and feel easy
There’s a reason I kept building this weekend. The progress bar at the bottom of each instruction book page gave me the dose of dopamine I needed to keep going. “You’re 35% there!” it said. “You’re not stuck—you’re in bag 5 of 17!”
Sometimes compliance can feel like bag 1 of ∞. That’s why great processes often include:
Progress indicators
Clear definitions of “done”
Feedback loops (even basic ones!)
Moments of delight or reinforcement
Compliance isn’t just about setting expectations. It’s about designing systems that help people meet them—even when they’re busy, stressed, or staring down a 2,354-piece set.
⛰️⛰️⛰️
