Too many of you are being passive daily, and then judging yourselves for not seeing the results – Gary Vaynerchuk. Too often, we usually stumble upon a career or intentionally choose our direction and step into a role fully aware of its importance and become driven by purpose. But over time, that purpose can dwindle and eventually fade if not nurtured. Purpose requires nurturing, discipline and consistency. The work that you do may begin to become more of a routine and feel repetitive when you are not in alignment with your ‘why‘. Sooner or later, what once felt meaningful to you can slowly turn into just another task to check off the list and wait so the salary reflects at the end of the month.
This is where the danger of being passive within your role begins. Your role in financial crime was never meant to stop at ensuring organisations or individuals are compliant with the law only. Your job/role is the foundation in your professional journey but what you do along the way determines the results you will see ten years from now. The work that you do daily reaches far beyond just the policies, controls, and reports that you deliver.
Allow me to present this perspective to you. Let us say we are baking scones for a funeral, but we realise there is no sugar. So, instead of not baking we go ahead and bake by following the recipe without sugar. The scones are baked, however, they lack the one ingredient that gives them that balance. Without sugar, something essential is missing in that scone.
In the same way, the fight against financial crime cannot succeed if even one ingredient disengages. You are one of those ingredients that are significant to the prevention of financial crime. Whether you’re in fraud prevention, financial crime compliance, AML , forensics or risk management, you are an essential ingredient to the scone. Behind every transaction you flag, every irregularity that you investigate there is a real human impact happening. Even when you never see the face attached to it, the impact exists. When your role becomes passive, the system weakens within your organization. This profession demands intentional presence and a conscious decision, every day, to remember why you chose this path in the first place.
You are not here to merely observe compliance. You are not here to simply process risk within your organization and just deliver results. You are in this space because your role matters, nothing is really ever just a coincidence. Carry your role with purpose.
See you next week, Monday!