If you have to verify, did you trust in the first place?
It’s an unfortunate use of the word “but”. It should be “Trust and verify”.
This Russian proverb actually calls for two distinct obligations. We must trust each other if we want real progress to happen. And we must verify compliance as part of our duty of care to those we serve.
In that sense, to verify is to build trust.
“The secret to happiness is helping others.” – Chinese proverb
“You can have anything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
“The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed.” – Adam Grant
See the pattern?
Today, there are colleagues in our organization struggling with an ethical dilemma. Reach out and help them. You’ll become a better ethical leader in the process.
We know that it’s way better for employees to hear about ethics & compliance from their business leader than from their ECO.
And do you know what’s even better than that? Two or more business leaders debating an ethical issue in front of the employees, each arguing in favor of a different path or outcome.
In a healthy culture, these debates happen daily.
When’s your next ethical debate?
HT to Seth Godin
Larry Fink is at it again in his 2019 letter to CEOs. His message is clear: there is more to corporations than profits.
BlackRock is not alone. Big investors are now demanding more from issuers because they finally agree that purpose and planet positively impact the bottom line.
We need one more group to get the message: the analysts. For one hour per week, you can run an easy experiment for the next month or two. Listen to an analyst call each week and count how many times they ask a question about “doing the right thing.” I can give you the answer right now: zero. If a company is announcing the opening of a factory in a developing nation, analysts want to know if there will be enough skilled workers and whether the infrastructure is sufficient. The fact that corruption is rampant in that country seems to be irrelevant.
Companies take analysts’ questions seriously. When analysts finally become concerned with how things are done (i.e. with the culture), we’ll see a new wave of progress.
When we first invented the car, its adoption was slow and we had plenty of time to figure out what rules of the road would be necessary. A century later, we invented the self-driving car and we can’t fully bring it to market because the rules aren’t in place.
We’ve entered an era when technology moves faster than our ability to create rules around it. I doubt we will ever go back to a slower pace, at least not in our lifetime. So what shall we do?
One answer is to once again become comfortable relying on values. In the absence of rules, values fill the gap. We need to bring ethical considerations to new technologies, starting at the ideation stage. We need to ask “Is this good for humanity?”
Technology is neither good nor bad, but what we do with it can be one or the other. Let’s adopt a values-based approach to technology.
Yesterday I attended a meeting about corporate culture and, more specifically, about employee empowerment.
Midway through the meeting, the leader mentioned that culture doesn’t change overnight. He used the apt expression “It takes time to turn a ship around.”
Looking at him speak to only two dozen employees in a company of over 40,000, I knew he wasn’t using the expression as a platitude. This was his third meeting on the topic, with a plan to have many more. A few employees at a time. Drip by drip. Helping turn the ship around.
As Seth Godin says, the long run is made up of a bunch of short runs. Which means that the short runs truly matter. None of them alone will change the whole thing but without all of them the change doesn’t happen.
The best time to start changing your culture was 10 years ago. The second best time is today.
In many countries, employment is “at will”.
This means that we can get a job without having to sign a multi-year contract and we can quit anytime we like if a better opportunity presents itself.
It also means that an employer can let us go at any time for convenience. If the economy is bad, they can let us go. If they don’t like the types of movies we watch on the weekend, they can also let us go.
There is more room for abuse in such “unregulated markets”, and most of the employment abuses comes from employers (employees don’t kill their income just to spite their employers). This is why corporate values are important. Values like trust, respect and integrity can prevent jerks from firing employees for no good reason. Where there is no rule, values fill the gap.
Leaders should meet regularly with HR to review recent terminations, with a goal to verify that they were both legal and ethical.
As I read Michael Volklov’s excellent summary of the college admission scandal, I wondered if any employee had ever bribed their way into my company.
Seems crazy? Ask yourself these questions: Has anyone ever lied on their resume to get a job with you (padding their educational or professional experience)? Has anyone ever improperly used a relationship they have with an existing employee to get through the door (a classic conflict of interest)? If your organization is large enough, the answer is probably yes.
So while it’s unlikely that any of your current managers would accept a bribe in exchange for a job, it’s not impossible. And it’s worthy of a fun 5-minute exercise during your next management meeting.
How did you get here?
“By cheating, of course”, he said.
The days were numbered.
I’m not going to be happy just when I finally buy the New York Jets. I’m happy now trying to buy the NY Jets. You have to love the process.
Gary Vaynerchuk
Ethics and compliance professionals aim for specific outcomes. We strive to reduce the pressure that employees feel to engage in wrongdoing, to reduce the number of instances employees notice wrongdoing around them, to increase their levels of reporting when they do see wrongdoing, and to decrease instances of retaliation when they report wrongdoing.
We engage in specific actions to reach these outcomes. We seek to draft simple policies, to create effective training, to communicate clear expectations, to investigate swiftly, and to discipline fairly.
As with all in life, we have more control over our actions than we do over our desired outcomes. Thus the key to a happy work life for an E&C professional is to love the process, to do each task as well as we can, in the present. If we devote ourselves to this art, we should get the outcomes we seek. If we don’t, we’ve been handed a learning putting us back on the path to mastery.
The Ethical Leader 