On loyalty

Imagine you lead a small team and learn that you will have to dismantle it in 6 months.

In an employee-centric culture, you will be expected to let your team know immediately and given resources to make sure they land in a good spot within or without the company.

In a customer-centric culture, you may be expected to keep it a secret until the last minute, for fear that your team will neglect the customer once they know their fate. The irony is that this fear would most likely materialize because your team had been operating in a customer-centric environment for so long, one where they always came second at best.

In an employee-centric culture, the employees’ loyalty to the company enures to the benefit of the customer.

Training options

There are different ways to train employees. Depending on the risk we face, some ways are better than others. Here are a few options (among many others):

  • Onboarding training – That’s the one-and-done approach. It should be reserved for no/low-risk activities, like “Here is where the corporate policy manual is.”
  • Basic training – Also for one-time training events, and recommended for low/medium-risk activities, like “Careful Email Communications”.
  • Refresher training – The training we repeat every year or every other year, for specific groups of employees. Best for medium/high risk activities, like “Discrimination and Harassment”.
  • Task-based training – This is when the training is baked into the actual tasks of the high-risk activity. Ideal for significant risks like antitrust, corruption, or trade sanctions.
  • Simulated-risk training – I call it War Games. A common example today is phishing your own employees to test their alertness, awareness and decision-making skills. When used for high-risk activities, repeatedly failing these exercises could lead to disciplinary actions.

The jerks we protect

Is there someone you work with that is so toxic that if they were to be fired you would feel compelled to thank leadership for getting rid of them?

If so, why wait to speak up? If you truly feel that leadership would welcome your thanks after the fact, rest assured that they would prefer that you speak up now before it gets worse.

(And it’s fine to do it anonymously)

On chaos

In a recent post, Linda Henman suggested a list of questions that we can ask ourselves when trying to determine if someone is a strong decision-maker. Among them was the following: “How does chaos affect this person?”

My organization is currently navigating an intense period of change. Not only are we integrating a recently-acquired company of 30,000 employees, we are also preparing for the spinoff of two business units counting more than 100,000 employees. These complex initiatives require an extraordinary amount of delegation, thus a need for strong decision-makers.

We are embracing these changes because of the opportunities they present. At the same time, we are focusing intensely on the additional risks that chaos generates, including ethical risks. One of our countermeasures is an all-employee training entitled “Leading Ethically Through Change”, in which we explain how the pressures of VUCA* can affect decision-making. We believe that the first step in navigating chaos is to understand how chaos affects us.

To improve her organization, the ethical leader should develop strong decision-makers who can ride the waves of chaos when they swell.

*Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity

What would [insert your name here] do?

We can remove most sins if we have a witness standing by as we are about to go wrong. The soul should have someone it can respect, by whose example it can make its inner sanctum more inviolable. Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts!

Seneca, Moral Letters, 11.9

Seneca was a powerful Roman statesman and he was rich. He had the cover and the means to do pretty much as he pleased, just like today’s rich and powerful.

But like most Stoic philosophers, he sought to live a good life. When tempted to go wrong, he would imagine Cato the Younger by his side. “What would Cato do?”, he would ask himself. Given Cato’s reputation for moral rectitude, this was the equivalent of today’s newspaper test.

As we think of the rich and powerful who were recently dragged to testify in front of US political committees, beaten by the media, and ridiculed by late show hosts, we can safely assume that they now wish they had done things differently. Unable to hear the cognitive dissonance on their own, they now wish a trusted friend had spoken up.

Living a good life not only provides you with peace of mind, it also makes you a Cato for someone else.

Token of appreciation

When my kids open the fridge and complain that “there is nothing to eat”, I remind them that there is a big difference between having no food and not having your favorite foods.

It’s the same difference between being homeless and not living in the house of your dreams. Or between having no car and driving a car that doesn’t have a Bluetooth connection to your phone. Where has gratitude gone?

At work, customer-facing employees often complain that they “can’t give any gifts”. Unless they are dealing with government officials, that’s often not true.Their real complaint is that they can’t give the type of gifts that will wow the customer. They forget that gifts are often not required, and that when they are truly necessary, a modest gift is way better than no gift at all.

Any employee believing that a lavish gift is necessary must consider the possibility that they are facing a bribe request.

Do you listen to Tom Fox?

I recently discovered the Compliance Podcast Network created by Tom Fox.

Tom is leading 10 different podcasts and one of my favorites is the Daily Compliance News. Each episode is about 3 minutes long, delivered early in the morning, and highlights compliance stories from the previous day. It’s like NPR’s Hourly News Summary for compliance. I get all the important headlines and I decide if I want to chase the details.

Ethical leadership starts with ethical awareness, and ethical awareness comes from knowing where danger lies. Tom Fox’s 3-minute podcast is a gift to anyone truly wanting to up their E&C game.

I recommend all of Tom’s podcasts, including Popcorn and Compliance, where Tom partners with Jay Rosen to talk about the ethical dilemmas faced by famous movie characters (an idea I had years ago and never acted on). You can subscribe to every podcast here.

And beyond Tom’s podcasts, here are others that I am currently listening to:

Happy listening!

Not on my watch

At first, there are no rules.

A new technology comes along and it’s unregulated. Soon, we discover that it has harmful effects on the environment or on human beings. The regulators try to step in and do their job but the industry fights back. Profits before people and planet, they say.

Or…

A new technology comes along and disrupts an existing, well-regulated industry. The incumbent cries for justice and demands that the regulations be imposed on the newcomer – the same regulations the industry fought against when they were first proposed.

Hat tip to Seth Godin

ECI Best Practices Forum on Technology

Last week I attended the latest Best Practices Forum organized by the Ethics & Compliance Initiative. This one focused on the use of technology in E&C.

The highlight of the event for me was the Technology Showcase. During a two-hour session, about 10 companies presented on stage how they implemented a new technology, and then showcased that technology at a booth, taking questions from the attendees. There was a mix of low-budget and not-so-low-budget applications. A most practical approach to learning.

Here are some of my notes from the event:

  • E&C is not keeping up with innovation. Attendees blamed a lack of resources and cultural misalignment. I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that regulators are not keeping up with innovation. For decades, organizations have taken their cue from the law to shape their compliance program. Now, regulators are watching advances in blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, and can’t seem to understand what can or must be done.
  • Data used to be provide to humans. Now humans create the data by using mobile devices (e.g. phones), platforms (e.g. Facebook), wearables (e.g. watches), and thousands of products linked to the internet (e.g. thermostats). While everyone is generating data, only a few are leveraging it, some for good and some for bad. This data is never anonymous but instead needs to be anonymized. Because this data is created, analyzed and leverage by human, it is tainted by human biases (e.g Amazon recruiting AI project who hired more men than women).
  • When deploying new technology, start small. Think of a narrow piece of a problem. Identify your smallest viable audience/product. Just small enough to learn the benefits and dangers of the technology. Then scale as necessary. If using a vendor, ask for a beta.
  • Chat bots are relatively easy to create but they need several months/years of use to get smarter. When creating a chat bot, see the previous bullet (start small and narrow). They are a perfect tool to direct employees to existing information on the intranet (e.g. policies). They replace the need for E&C professionals to respond to emails and phone calls, improving their job satisfaction.
  • Technology has created a new wave of employee activism (e.g. Microsoft/ICE, Google/military drones).
  • Marketing has been using behavioral analytics for decades trying to sell us stuff. E&C should be using the same science to nudge employees towards compliance.
  • To my surprise, Salesforce.com appears to be a viable platform to create certifications, chat bots, CMS, etc.
  • Notable quotes
    • Education is not training. Education is information; training is application.
    • Trust and innovation are the two currencies of business today
  • Book recommendations
    • Nudge