You might think there is little to connect data protection, lego and the kazoo. One is about compliance and is often seen as dull but necessary. One is about childhood, fun and the joy of creating things. And one is a really annoying musical instrument.
However, they are all celebrated with their own national day on 28 January!
Data protection and lego
In my day-to-day work with small organisations, compliance is a lot like lego. It takes a lot of different bricks to create a good foundation. Sometimes those bricks are the same colour and size, and they all fit neatly together. Sometimes I am faced with a compliance approach like the house you built from the random bits of lego box. It’s all different colours and sizes, has the odd gap, and a wobbly bit of wall where you had to stack the same size bricks on top of each other because that’s all you had. Getting someone in to help is like getting a new box of mixed bricks - they help you to fill in the gaps and sort out the wonky bits.
And just like building something tangible out of lego, it also takes creativity to build the right compliance approach for an organisation. You have to work with what there is, not what you would like there to be. You want the quad laser cannons of the Millenium Falcon but all you have is the ice cream truck*.
Sometimes the organisation can get in more bricks and more specialist pieces, sometimes they can’t. So you make a less fancy house that does the basics. And just like lego you need a compliance approach that can be tweaked and adjusted as you need it to, or that can grow and scale as you do. Sometimes you add a storey to the house, sometimes just a garden.
What about the kazoo?
Well sometimes the people leading the charge on data protection have to blow a kazoo to get your attention! It’s loud and annoying, but it tells you something is up that you really need to look at.
Happy data protection day! Here’s to more lego and less kazoo.
* Before you pile in, I love the ice cream truck and probably played with it more than the nephew it was bought for. Life without ice cream is pointless.
If you are a small organisation struggling with your governance framework, or perhaps struggling to even get started, get in touch, and let’s get you sorted.
Picture credits: Lego: Xavi Cabrera from Unsplash; Kazoo: Jacek Halicki, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
