I spend a significant part of my professional life working in telecommunications and broadband regulatory compliance. I also paint. On the surface, those two parts of my life may not seem to have very much in common, but I’ve come to realize that how I look at things as an artist is very similar to the way I approach regulatory issues. Art teaches you to look at things differently.

When I look at a building I want to paint, I’m not simply looking at a building. I’m looking at the shapes that make it up, how the light falls across it, where the shadows are, which details matter, and which ones can be left out. I’m looking at how everything relates to everything else. Sometimes I have to move closer to understand a detail, and sometimes I have to step back to understand the entire composition. That ability to deliberately change perspective has become particularly useful in the way I look at regulation.

The Rule Is Only One Part of the Picture

At the federal level, telecommunications and broadband policies are developed from a broad perspective. The FCC and other regulators have to consider the big picture, including statutory requirements, technological changes, competition, consumer interests, funding priorities, and the needs of an industry made up of very different types of providers. We all know that is a complicated picture.

Once a rule, with its various obligations, reaches an individual carrier, however, the perspective changes. What appears to be one regulatory requirement from Washington may have much more complicated effects for a company once implementation begins.

A reporting requirement may depend on data that resides in several systems. A new consumer disclosure obligation may require changes to billing, websites, or marketing materials. A broadband funding requirement may involve engineering, finance, mapping, construction schedules, reporting, and ongoing compliance long after the initial funding decision has been made. The regulation may be contained in one document, but the operational impact is rarely that narrow. That is where being able to see both the detail and the larger composition becomes important.

Perspective Changes What You See

Art teaches you that perspective matters. Move a few feet in either direction and the same subject can look completely different. Regulatory policy works much the same way.

A requirement viewed from the federal level may look very different when viewed from the perspective of a small rural telephone company or a broadband provider serving rural areas. The objective may be the same, but the path to achieving it may not be.

A requirement that is relatively easy to implement in an organization with large regulatory and engineering departments may require a much smaller group of people at a rural carrier to implement those same requirements. That doesn’t necessarily mean the requirement itself is unreasonable. It means that understanding its true effect requires looking at it from more than one point of view.

The same is true when considering broadband deployment. A policy designed around national broadband objectives can look very different when it reaches a provider dealing with difficult terrain, long construction distances, limited contractors, permitting delays, supply constraints, or a small customer base spread across a large geographic area. Changing perspective helps expose those differences.

Good Policy Still Has to Work in the Real World

Federal telecommunications policy has to begin somewhere, and broad standards are necessary. But there can be a significant distance between creating a policy and implementing it. One of the most valuable perspectives someone with carrier-level experience can bring to a regulatory discussion is the ability to ask what happens next.

What information will a provider actually need to collect? Where does that information come from? Does the data already exist, or will it have to be created? Will an existing billing, mapping, or network system have to be changed?

Those questions aren’t arguments against regulation. They are part of understanding whether a regulatory objective can be translated effectively into operations. A policy can make perfect sense at a high level and still produce complications that aren’t immediately visible until you look at how it will actually be carried out.

Seeing the Relationships Between the Pieces

Painting is rarely about one element in isolation. Change the value of the sky and the building beneath it may suddenly look different. Add too much detail in one area and the entire composition can become unbalanced. Every decision affects something around it.

Telecommunications regulation has similar interdependencies. Broadband policy touches infrastructure, universal service, competition, affordability, mapping, consumer protection, cybersecurity, and network reliability, among many other areas. A decision intended to influence one part of the industry can create effects somewhere else and that makes it important to look beyond the immediate regulatory question.

Does a proposed requirement duplicate information already being collected elsewhere? Does one federal program define locations or service levels differently from another? Could a policy intended to solve one problem unintentionally make it more difficult for a provider to accomplish another federal objective?

Looking for those relationships is a large part of regulatory work. It is also very similar to the way I approach a painting. You have to understand the individual elements, but you also have to recognize that none of them exists entirely on its own.

Sometimes You Have to Step Back

One of the easiest mistakes to make when painting is to work too close to the paper for too long. You become focused on an individual line, shadow, or small imperfection until you stop seeing the painting itself. The solution is simple. Step back.

Regulatory work sometimes requires the same thing. It is easy to become consumed by the language of a particular rule or obligation. Those details matter, and compliance depends on getting them right. But occasionally it is useful to step back and ask what the regulation is ultimately intended to accomplish.

That broader perspective can change the way you approach implementation. It can also reveal when multiple regulatory requirements are pushing toward the same objective from different directions—or when they may unintentionally be working against one another. Understanding both the specific requirement and the larger policy objective makes it easier to identify those situations and, when appropriate, explain them to policymakers.

Not Everything Looks the Same From Washington

Federal policymakers face an extraordinarily difficult task in developing rules for an industry that ranges from some of the largest corporations in the country to very small providers serving remote rural communities. No single perspective can fully represent that industry.

That is why participation from carriers, associations, state organizations, and consumers matters. Each one sees a different part of the picture. For rural and smaller broadband providers in particular, bringing an operational perspective into federal regulatory discussions can help demonstrate consequences that might not otherwise be obvious. A proposal may look relatively simple until someone explains how the necessary data is actually collected, how a rural network is engineered, how long infrastructure construction takes, or how many systems have to be changed to implement what appears to be a straightforward requirement.

That kind of information gives policymakers another angle from which to evaluate the issue. And sometimes changing the angle changes what you see. Part of our responsibility in representing small rural providers is to ensure that their challenges are explained in a way regulators can understand and apply to current and future rulemaking.

Creativity Has a Place in Regulatory Work

Regulatory compliance is built on rules, orders, deadlines, and documentation. Creativity doesn’t change any of those things. But creativity isn’t the same as ignoring structure.

It is the ability to recognize patterns, make connections, consider different perspectives, and imagine how a decision made in one place may affect something somewhere else. Being an artist hasn’t changed the regulatory requirements I work with. It has influenced the way I look at them.

I tend to move back and forth between the detail and the larger picture. I look for relationships between things that may initially appear separate. I try to understand how the same issue looks from several different positions. And when something doesn’t seem to fit, I’m inclined to change my perspective and look at it again.

In an industry as complicated and rapidly changing as telecommunications and broadband, I think there is value in that. Sometimes the most important thing you can bring to a regulatory discussion isn’t another answer. It is another way of seeing the problem.