Breaking coconuts by hand in records management

I've learned a lot from youtube, one of the things that constantly interrupts my learning experience is their new "reels" - or whatever they're called. The short videos.

One popped up recently that showed a man (a martial artist of some kind) being offered a lot of money if he could smash a rack full of coconuts with his bare hands.

He hit the first one - and it didn't break.

He hit the second one - and it didn't break.

He hit the third one - and it didn't break.

At that point, he was in so much pain that he stopped trying.

Obviously he didn't get the money.

There's an analog here to a lot of what I see in records.

I constantly see organisational policy implemented that says "people must keep records like this."

Then there's a strategy for achieving compliance with the policy.

And it doesn't work - the coconut doesn't break.

Sometimes it doesn't break for a decade.

And we keep going with the same strategy.

Which confuses me.

We act as though someone has said to us "you can't get the prise unless you break these coconuts with your bare hands."

When the reality of organisational life, is that it's really "we want the gains from the broken coconuts, we aren't really worried about how you achieve them."

Why don't we change?

Is it extreme pain tolerance?

Or something else?