Whenever I attend a large meeting of E&C professionals, I learn about leading or best practices from other organizations. Of course, no organization is flawless but here are some of the practices that were shared yesterday during Day 1 of the ECI Fellows meeting:
- In one banking organization, the E&C group must sign off on compensation plans. Their job is to look for elements that might drive unethical behavior.
- In one aerospace organization, 40% of the employee performance evaluation is based on the corporate values.
- In one healthcare organization, executives go through a regular 360 assessment, with a particular emphasis on feedback from subordinates.
And here are some concepts from Day 1 that got my attention:
- However you design your compensation system, make sure you send a clear message that “compliance affects your pay.”
- To influence ethical behavior through compensation, focus on variable pay over fixed pay and benefits.
- Goals focus your attention (good) but can also create blinders to important and risky behaviors happening in your peripheral vision (bad).
- Goals cause people to take on more risk (this can be good or bad). An independent party should evaluate those risks.
Finally, some thoughts from the session with Neel Doshi:
- Data, in its most natural form, creates play. Unfortunately, many organizations weaponize data to create emotional and economic pressure.
- Dashboards and scorecards don’t tell the whole story. Where there is red on a dashboard, it is certainly not proof that people are the problem. Go see for yourself. The further removed you are from the event, the stronger the blame bias.
- If no one in your organization owns culture, then it’s a great opportunity for E&C to take the lead. It’s much harder to do so when another function claims ownership.
The Ethical Leader 