I wish you well

A good portion of the emails I receive nowadays include a wish that I am doing well.

With tens of thousands of new cases of COVID-19 every day, it’s a reasonable wish to express.

In my organization, it starts at the top. Our CEO sends a video message every week asking employees to make their health and well-being a priority.

I have noticed that many organizations are not only communicating more but communicating better. They are not only providing technical support to employees who must work remotely, they are providing emotional support.

When this pandemic no longer puts our health at risk, will these practices go away?

I hope not. Everyone of us is under some type of threat on any given day, often invisible to our co-workers. We care for a troubled teenager or a sick parent, our marriage is shaky, we struggle with medical bills… you name it.

Perhaps it’s not the place of co-workers to mingle in such private affairs. Nevertheless, there’s always a place for well wishes.

Time to move on

Too many school bullies wait for their parents to move to a new school district before they become the nice boys and girls they have long wanted to be.

Some jerks in our organizations are waiting for the same “opportunity”.

Give it to them.

Decisions to make before the end of COVID-19

In her book Giving Voice to Values, Mary Gentile recommends that we play out ethical dilemmas before they happen. When a supervisor routinely gathers her team and asks “How would we handle this scenario?”, they have a much better chance at doing the right thing when it actually happens.

This is what Richard Bistrong is recommending that we do before the economy reopens. When it does, there will be pressures from customers, suppliers and senior leadership to get back on track as quickly as possible. Inefficiencies from regulations and internal policies that were tolerated in good times will become infuriating. Even good regulations and policies will be questioned. “Can’t we just skip this step, just this time?”

The pushback will be understandable. In fact, it should be invited at all times. But the best decisions will not be made under extreme pressures after months of idleness and isolation.

Identify your future tough decisions now.

And start the role play.

Three questions

“Can we do it?”

That’s the compliance question. If the answer is yes, there’s a second question.

“Should we do it?”

That’s the ethics question. If the answer is yes, there’s a third question.

“How should we do it?”

That’s the culture question. Different ways of doing something lead to different cultural outcomes.

Where the rule of law is strong, people have recognized the importance of the first question. Where transparency is present, people have learned to ask the second question. And in a world where the means of production are becoming accessible to all, the third question will soon break any organization that ignores it.

How many people can you trust?

Here’s a little known biological fact about humans: we have the capacity to create trusting relationships with about 150 people.

That’s plenty of room for family members, friends, some colleagues, and a few other people. But how does someone create a culture of trust across an organization of 1,000 employees? Or 100,000 employees?

At my company of 190,000 employees, my advice (from the corporate office) has been to focus our culture efforts on supervisors. Each supervisor has, on average, 8 direct reports. Each supervisor can take actions that will build trust with each direct report. The actions of a supervisor in Riyadh will be different from the ones taken by a supervisor in Tokyo. The best thing I can do from the corporate office is to give supervisors the tools they need to build trust with their team. The worse thing I can do is impose a cookie-cutter approach.

One more thing: trust creates trust. A person who feels trusted is more trusting. So start at the top. Have the CEO extend trust to her team. Let each of her direct reports build that chain of trust with their direct reports. Then, no matter how large your organization is, you can spread that culture across all continents.

AI ethics for business – Part 3

I recently shared insights I gained after completing a free, online course on AI ethics for business offered by Seattle University. Those insights were shared in two blog posts:

Today, I am sharing a conversation I had with three other E&C colleagues who also competed this course: Tom Fox, Sean Freidlin and Patrick Henz. The conversation is featured in episode 123 of Tom Fox’s Innovation in Compliance podcast series.

Keep learning!

It might come back, you know?

To understand what is happening today, we should devote at least 80% of our time studying history and no more than 20% on current news.

This is true of any topic. War, entertainment, natural disasters, exploration, politics, sports, etc.

And, of course, it is true of the current pandemic. At this point, we won’t learn much from current news. The precautionary measures won’t change. Some numbers will go up, some will go down. A new celebrity will become infected. Not terribly helpful.

Instead, study the last pandemic of 1918 and you’ll learn that after it was “over”, it came back.

Twice.

So today’s leaders need to have a plan for what they’ll do if the COVID-19 dies down mid-summer, only to return at the end of the year. And then again in 2021 or 2022.

How will governments assist those in need? How will employers support their employees, customers, suppliers and local communities? How will health facilities serve the sick?

Leave Facebook aside. Learn from history. Take action.

What are you after?

This post on semiotics by Seth Godin got me thinking.

Can a business leader increase her social standing by being ethical?

Will her ethical behavior increase her sense of belonging with an important group?

If so, what flags, signals or other communications should she use to convey her status?

And if she does all of these things well, will it be enough for her?

Would it be for you?

Cheap t-shirts, pigs, and ethical decisions

Those who lived through the Great Depression spent the rest of their lives saving every penny they could, and placing them only in the safest of investments.

This severe worldwide economic depression of the 1930s changed how an entire generation (or two) lived on a day-to-day basis. It also changed how everyone prepared for the future.

The current pandemic is likely to have the same effect. Just take two bits of news I read today:

A crisis exposes vulnerabilities in a system. In most cases, these vulnerabilities were not invisible before the crisis. They were simply deemed unlikely, thus ignored.

The garment worker, the factory owner, and the pig farmer will have this crisis on their mind for the rest of their lives. It will change how they work, how they assess risk, and how they live, just like the Great Depression did.

More importantly for the very near term, business leaders and workers will make important decisions to save their businesses or, in some cases, their lives. These decisions will have significant compliance and ethical considerations. For now, and for the future.

Are they ready?

Let the pressure propel you

I often write about two topics on this blog: the fraud triangle and the science of total motivation.

The fraud triangle tells us that given enough pressure, a person will engage in fraud (or any wrongdoing, really) if they think they can get away with it and if they can rationalize their behavior. The science of total motivation (ToMo) demonstrates that pressure can hurt business performance.

The common culprit is pressure. And the question for any organization affected by the COVID-19 pandemic is: are your employees feeling additional pressure right now? If the answer is yes, then you know what to expect.

But external pressures can also propel organizations willing to improve their culture, to experiment with ways to cope with this crisis, to align their purpose with the goals of public health, and to take steps today that will make them stronger when the pandemic is over. The worse thing they can do is to hunker down.