Category: Uncategorized

Who is it for?

I often sit down to create a document that will be helpful to the ethics and compliance officers (ECOs) that I support. It could be a policy summary, an FAQ, or a quick reference guide.

In the middle of it, I’ll sometimes realize that the information I’m including could also be very helpful to the employee population at-large. So I’ll change the focus and try to write a document for all employees that my ECOs could also use.

I’ve learned that this is usually a mistake. When you try to write for different audiences in one document, the needs of one audience (or both) will be neglected in the process. It might be more work, but writing a separate document for each audience is better.

The first casualty of war

In the last few days, Russia has restricted its citizens’ access to social media and made it illegal to publish news that contradict information provided by the Kremlin.

Truth is the first casualty of war, as they say.

In some organizations, gentler but similar tactics are employed by leadership. Employees are not allowed to use social media at work. When they use it at home, they can never mention their employer on their profile or their posts. Articles published on the company’s intranet have no comment section for employees to chime in. Employees cannot ask questions before, during or after town hall meetings. I could go on.

The message is clear: the company has one voice, and it will not be contradicted.

Is your company at war with its employees?

When is a leash necessary?

Early in the pandemic, two complimentary things happened: thousands of people adopted dogs, and thousands of school yards, sports fields and municipal parks went empty.

This situation allowed owners to let their dogs run loose where leashes would normally have been required. And now that little (and not so little) people have returned to sports fields and municipal parks, police officers are stepping up the enforcement of leash regulations.

Something similar is bound to happen at the office, as millions of employees who got used to working from home are now being recalled. Just like leashes, some work rules will have to be enforced anew. But all rules?

The single mother, who was working on her laptop from 6:00 to 7:30 AM, and then taking her kids to school, running a few errands in town, and returning to her laptop at 9:45 AM – will she now be able to arrive “late” at work?

The employees who wore t-shirts on team Zoom calls – will they have to revert to collared shirts, even on days when they have no meetings?

The dad who went to see his daughter’s after-school volleyball game at 4:15 PM, and made up the work time after dinner – will he be able to skip out of work early?

What is the workplace for? Who is it for? Why do we have offices? Why do we need people in them? Those are the questions we need to revisit before we blindly apply the old, pre-pandemic rules.

High-flying JetBlue pilot

It was a cold morning yesterday in Buffalo, NY.

I’m sure that the JetBlue passengers were not happy about the 4-hour delay to their Floridian destination.

That is, until they learned that the delay was cause by the detention of their pilot, who had attempted to board the flight to take command while drunk (at more than four times over the FAA’s blood-alcohol limit).

I wonder what would have happened if the TSA agent had not noticed the pilot’s drunkenness. What if a flight attendant had noticed? Would he have spoken up? What if the co-pilot had noticed? Would she have spoken up? I expect they would, given how safety-focused everyone is in the aerospace industry.

Well, not everyone, evidently.

I also wonder if airline employees receive training on how to respond when they see a pilot willing to operate the aircraft under the influence? I wonder, because that type of training is not commonplace in most organizations. We tell employees about the importance of reporting, and we remind them of the channels available, but we rarely tell them exactly how to report. It’s an important gap, especially when the wrongdoing is committed by an intimidating person in authority, like a pilot or an executive.

Where good ideas come from

Ideas rarely emerge when you do the same thing with the same people every day.

To find ideas, you need to get up from your desk. Over the years, I’ve found that the further away from my desk I am, the better the ideas.

For example, I’ve noticed that the ideas I get from peer companies are often better than the ideas I get from my work colleagues. Similarly, the ideas I get from companies outside of my industry are often better than the ones from peer companies. We can push this further…

Remember how Archimedes figured out how to measure the density of his King’s crown after noticing his bathtub water rising as he entered it? This is a great example of what Steven Johnson calls “the adjacent possible”. To get to the adjacent possible, you can’t stand in the middle of your circle. You have to get impossibly close to its edge. You have to believe that a great idea for your ethics program might appear while you are making your own change at a food truck, or watching people board a plane, or listening to an episode of StoryCorps.

Focus on your problem, and allow answers to come from outside of your focus.

What/Who is it for?

You tell your employee on March 1 that she will get her bonus check on April 1.

On March 15, she resigns with an effective date of April 15. Do you still pay her bonus? It depends what the bonus is for. Is it a reward for good work or is it a retention tool?

“What is it for?” and “Who is it for?” are key business practices questions. They also apply to E&C programs. Who are you writing this policy for? What is this training for? Who is the audience for this communication?

Often times, we tell employees that these things are for them, when in fact they were created with the regulators or the shareholders in mind. Employees feel the disconnect, and they don’t engage.

There is value in creating E&C programs that are responsive to regulators’ expectations. But if we want them to resonate with employees, we need to be open about who and what they are for.

Stories

We all tell ourselves stories.

Some stories serve us well, others don’t.

For example, the story for many people is that they must exercise daily for at least 30 minutes. For others (but sometimes for the same people), the story is that they must have 3 or 4 beers every night because they’ve worked so hard during the day.

Our employees come to work with stories too. Some believe in an honest day’s work. Others feel justified to steal office supplies because they consider themselves underpaid.

Even those of us who build E&C programs have stories. One story is that workplace regulations are complicated and our job is to help our employees stay compliant. Another is that preventing risk is more important than innovation. Not all stories enable the business.

What stories do you tell yourself?

Timeout

I don’t care for basketball.

And I don’t think that college sports should drive up the cost of education in the U.S.

So you can understand why I roll my eyes when I see one coach hit another because of an inopportune timeout.

Really? Who cares?! It’s basketball! A game where you try to throw a ball in a hoop! How can you get upset at this when 2.5 million American children are homeless?!

I’m too harsh, of course. I, too, get upset at silly things that no one cares about (you should hear some of my thoughts at the poker table). We all lose our temper from time to time, and we most often regret it later.

Seeing this coach get upset and physical reminded me of disrespectful behaviors we all see in the workplace. Often times, we can link a specific work pressure to the outburst. The pressure was the trigger. And the trigger needs to be looked at and questioned. Too often, we discipline the employee and move on. The pressure remains, building up for the next outburst.