Here is one piece of advice I give during the onboarding process of a new ethics and compliance officer: build a brand.

Take action each month (or better, each week) to remind those you serve what your role is. Explain a section of your code of conduct in the company’s newsletter. Present the key requirements of a new policy at an all-hands meeting. Send a reminder email when the training completion deadline approaches. And so on.

Do this consistently, and when someone has a concern, they will know who to go to. Better yet, they will come to you before it’s a concern, before anything is done. You will be seen as an advisor, not just an enforcer.

Build a brand. It convinces other people to come to you before they even know they have a need to do so.

It is widely accepted that diversity is good for business.

It is true for the small team working on a marketing campaign. It is true for the executives making strategic decisions. And it is true for company boards setting the vision.

Yet, many companies fail to act in their own best interest. Most make no efforts to include in their ranks, and on their boards, members from underrepresented communities.

So “progressive” or “liberal” or “bleeding-heart” legislatures sometimes try to give these corporations a “hand” or a “push” or “incentives”. And, as it so often happens, the courts are right there ready to strike these laws down as unconstitutional.

OK. Fine. We can’t force it on you. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad for you. Perhaps you didn’t notice the benefits of diversity when they were first mentioned in a research papers 40 years ago. Maybe you didn’t read the Harvard Business Review article 20 years ago that summarized all that research. But you probably have seen the benefits of diversity being touted on the cover of Forbes and on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for the last 10 years.

So what are you waiting for? Even the courts agree that diversity is good – it just can’t be legally imposed (in the US).

Go ahead. Beat your competitor to it.

Wikipedia is a gift to humanity.

And right now, it’s a threat to Russia.

There’s a page on Wikipedia describing Russia’s criminal acts. Russia wants that page removed because it contradicts its own narrative, and such contradictions are against Russian law. Putin doesn’t want his fellow citizens to know what he’s up to, for fear of another revolution.

So far, it appears that Wikipedia will not back down, despite the threat of heavy fines. Every year, this non-profit asks me to donate $3, which I gladly give. I intend to give much more this year.

Please share this page widely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine. Post it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, etc. If you know people living in Russia, send it to them. The sooner the truth is known in Russia, the sooner this war will end.

Donald Trump is an infinite source of inspiration for people like me who write about business ethics. While he manages to break just about every accepted rule of business conduct, he has been particularly generous with his disregard of conflicts of interests.

So it is not entirely surprising to learn that his chief of staff (his 4th and last), in the days after the November 2020 elections, was strategizing, over text messages, with the wife of Supreme Court Justice Thomas, on how to overturn these elections, while Justice Thomas was hearing cases involving the very same election results. In one such case, Justice Thomas had to decide if specific White House records, which included his wife’s texts, should be turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Thomas did not recuse himself and was the only Justice on the Court of the opinion that the White House records should not be turned over.

Conflict of interests rules are simple: (1) disclose the conflict and (2) recuse yourself from the decision-making process. Even grade-school students understand the common sense underlying these rules.

Yet, a sitting Supreme Court Justice seems unwilling to honor them.

No surprise that the Supreme Court approval rating is down to 40%.

I had the pleasure of listening to Tim Ryan yesterday, as part of the Executive Lectureship series at Bentley University’s W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics.

If you click on Tim’s name above, it will bring you to his LinkedIn profile, where you can read his articles and posts on the importance of building trust. Tim grew up in a modest blue collar family, worked hard from a young age, paid his way through college, and paid attention when life lessons showed up at his door.

Highlights from my lecture notes:

• Work hard and be kind to everyone.
• Let people know how you make decisions.
• The best leaders listen – to all stakeholders.
• Corporations need to be more humble and admit to their mistakes – that’s how you regain lost trust.
• No one will remember that you grew revenues by 6% or 8% during any given year. They’ll remember how you treated people.
• Embrace this mindset:
  • Be a problem solver, not a problem pointer-outer
  • Be a bridge builder
  • Celebrate the small wins (lest you want to run out of steam)

What percentage of your employees care so much about your ethics and compliance program that they have read your code of conduct, cover-to-cover?

Let’s be very generous and say it’s 1%.

In my company, that’s nearly 1,800 employees.

How many employees would that be in your organization?

There is something special about them. They are part of your tribe, whether you know them or not.

Find them, and empower them.

They will attract others.

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HT to Seth Godin

Seth Godin wrote an insightful post today about corporate culture. I highly recommend you read it.

Because he picked on FedEx, it reminded me of a post of mine I wrote about three years ago. I’m reposting it below but you can find the original here.

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My 11-year old daughter has been using an old iPhone 4 without a SIM card for a few years now. It’s more like an iPod with a few games on it.

The phone is so old that we can’t update the iOS on it anymore. And it only has 8 GB of storage on it. Which means she can’t download the latest games or store more than a few pictures.

So on Tuesday, she used her money to buy a refurbished iPod. Apple shipped it by FedEx and delivery was scheduled for Thursday. On Wednesday, she bought an iPod case on Amazon, with overnight Prime delivery.

Both items arrived on Thursday. FedEx left the $200 iPod in my driveway, near the street, in plain sight, begging to be stolen, despite the fact that several neighbors have complained to FedEx of missing packages in recent months.

Meanwhile, Amazon delivered the $8 case all the way to my front door mat, out-of-sight, took a picture of the delivery and sent it to my phone. Just 12 extra steps.

Technically, both companies delivered their product. But Amazon showed a greater degree of care for its buyer than Apple and FedEx did.

Caring is a competitive advantage. Caring for our employees improves retention and recruitment. Caring for our suppliers improves quality. Caring for the communities where we operate enhances our brand.

If we care for the right things, profits will come.

Today I simply want to share a comic that explains the dangers of algorithm bias and what we can do to avoid them.

It’s important for E&C professionals to understand this danger because almost every organization in the world is now directly using, or affected by, artificial intelligence.

Two years ago, I completed a free online course on the ethics of AI for business. You can find a link to the course and read my notes on data collection and bias here.