Put the odds in your favor

People tease me about my interest in poker. Is an ethics professional allowed to gamble?

My favorite poker game is Texas Hold’em. I like it because it’s mostly a game of skill, with the element of chance greatly reduced.

When you play enough poker, you start thinking about odds in other areas of your life, like when I see an employee misbehave at work.  Let me explain and give you a simple example.

You are playing Texas Hold’em and your hole cards are of the same suit, say hearts. The flop reveals one more heart, and the turn is a heart as well. All you need is one more heart on the river to make your flush, which we’ll assume would be the winning hand.

What are your odds of getting that heart? Well, you know that there are 9 hearts left somewhere in the 46 cards that are still face down (either in the deck or face down in front of the other players). So you have about a 1 in 5 chance that the next card will be a heart.

Should you bet? Well, that depends on the size of the bet and the size of the pot. If you must bet $1 and the pot has $10 in it, it’s a good bet. Why? Because if you played that hand 5 times, you would lose $1 four times and win $10 one time. Over the long run, this is a winning move.

Conversely, if you had to bet $10 into a $40 pot, it would be a bad bet.

So what does this have to do with bad behavior at work?

Well, take the employee who steals $50 from the petty cash box at the reception desk. In some way, he is betting his $50,000 salary that he won’t get caught stealing $50. What he is essentially doing is betting $50,000 into a $50 pot. As we’ve seen, this is a good bet only if his odds of getting caught are lower than 1000/1. Given the financial controls around petty cash, the workplace cameras, other employees walking by, it’s clearly not a good bet.

We’ve all heard of the small-time thieves making this common mistake, impulsively robbing a convenience store with a sign on the door warning them of camera surveillance and that the cash register never contains more than $200. On the other hand, professional criminals make much better bets, going for big rewards after careful planning.

We see employees (and politicians, and celebrities, etc.) make these bad bets all the time. Harassment, discrimination, conflicts of interest – you name it. They bet their reputation and future earnings on small pots when the odds are against them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that employees should carefully plan bigger scams. What I’m saying is that an employee’s odds of getting away with wrongdoing in the modern corporation are very low. Too low to bet their future earnings and reputation.

We all have so much good to give, why not stack the odds in our favor?

Who do we want to be?

Mr. Kraft has put the NFL, the New England Patriots, and his family (among others) in a difficult situation.

Superstars do this all the time. By superstars, I don’t mean just celebrities and household names, but also our best sales person in that new emerging market we just entered. Superstars get the attention, the accolades, extra benefits, and ample resources. By treating them like royalty, they come to think that the king can do no wrong.

And then they do.

Which leaves those in charge with a difficult decision to make. It is a difficult one because the different stakeholders they serve often have different interests. Any disciplinary decision is likely to upset one or more of the stakeholders. On top of that, the decision must be made in the middle of a crisis.

If we know that this happens all the time, and that it forces us to make a difficult decision during a crisis, why not make the decision in advance? Why not decide in advance that if a superstar engages in a behavior that discredits the organization we will take a specific action? We should not only decide what action to take but also how it will be implemented. Of course, there should be room for judgement based on the actual facts, but all involved should presume that the predetermined action will be taken unless extraordinary circumstances require that it not be. This can provide a fair warning to those considering wrongdoing and can remove a certain amount of pressure from the decision-makers.

Making these decisions in advance will be easier but by no means easy. It requires of leadership that they explore two fundamental questions: who are we, and who do we want to be?

On technology

Technology can help ethics & compliance professionals in two ways:

  • It can make our work easier to do, or
  • It can make our employees more compliant.

Business leaders will be more inclined to spend money on the second goal. So if you are asking the business to fund technology that will make your work easier, be sure to explain how it will also improve employees’ compliance.

On making connections

Later today I will have the pleasure to visit with Richard Bistrong in New York City.

I first learned about Richard via LinkedIn in 2015. His personal experience with corruption was both dramatic and fascinating. I started to follow him on social media and eventually sent him a direct message asking if we could meet in person. He immediately said yes, we met for coffee, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since.

The point of this post is to encourage you to reach out to those you can learn from. I have done this with authors, business leaders, compliance executives, podcasters and many others. Most of them will gladly engage with you, especially when you can provide value in return or, even better, first. They can become allies and cheerleaders. They can open doors and provide opportunities. They can make introductions that lead to more allies, cheerleaders and opportunities. And not simply opportunities for you to receive but more importantly for you to contribute. It’s a virtuous cycle that starts with a simple click of a “follow” button.

Who would you like to connect with today?

Want a microphone with that thermostat?

Google recently released a new Nest thermostat with a built-in microphone. At the time of release, the voice features were not created, so Google decided not to tell consumers about the existence of the microphone.

I don’t know about you but if I bring a new device in my home, I would like to know if it has a microphone or a camera in it. I watch just enough movies to know that microphones and cameras hooked up to the internet can be hacked. If my coffee maker has a microphone, or if my bedroom TV has a camera, I want to know, even if they don’t work right now.

The folks at Google made a rookie mistake when it comes to business ethics (assuming this was not an evil decision). They knew they could leave out the microphone from the marketing and tech materials but they never considered whether they should.

It’s tempting to dismiss those “downer” discussions when everyone is excited about launching a new product. But with this latest gaffe, Google’s reputation got tarnished a little bit more.

Making the newspaper test real

When we provide business ethics training, we tell employees to behave as if their doing would be featured on the front page of their local newspaper.

But then, when one of them is terminated for wrongdoing, we refrain from sharing the case with other employees. We invoke the fear of lawsuits, the need to negotiate a separation agreement, privacy concerns, or the distraction of having other employees discuss the matter.

These reasons are sometimes valid but they should be used exceptionally. Sharing is educating employees and protecting those who don’t recognize the pitfalls. Sharing is deterring other employees from doing the same thing. Sharing is an act of transparency that forces you to commit to be better. Sharing is an act of vulnerability that builds trust.

There is no need to use real names or locations when sharing these stories – cases can be anonymized. Of course, a few people will connect the dots. But it’s often a small price to pay in exchange for all the benefits.

What’s stopping you?

No matter what we do for a living, we run into situations forcing us to ask “What’s the right thing to do here?”

Here are some actions we can all take:

  • Don’t look the other way.
  • If we don’t know the answer, involve the right people.
  • Make a decision and execute it.
  • Learn something from the event.
  • Share our learning with colleagues, with the industry, with the world. (That’s what a blog is for)

How far down that list do you get when facing an ethical dilemma? If you often stop short, where and why?

Today, pay attention to your next ethical dilemma and try to run it through the whole process.

There is someone out there looking for the answer you have.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Plato gave this advice in The Republic (using different words).

William Makepeace Thackeray is believed to have coined the phrase in the 1850s (as reported in Laurence Hutton’s memoir).

The quote was eventually, and probably wrongly, attributed to Abraham Lincoln for the first time in 1946, 81 years after his death (Lincoln was born on this day in 1809)

The theme was delivered beautifully by Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1967 speech “What is Your Life’s Blueprint” (in the excerpt better known as “The Street Sweeper”).

On the surface, this quote seems to exhort us to simply be good at our craft, to hone the skills required of our job. Of course, it is much more than that. Those words urge us to forge our character and to seek justice.

Some would say we should seek justice for all mankind. I find it a tall order. I think it would suffice if all of us were just farmers and street sweepers, just children and parents, just employees and bosses.

Let us be just men and women.