A good idea requires patience

You have an idea that is worth testing.

But you work for a medium or large organization and you know senior management will not give you the resources to deploy it company-wide. In fact, you doubt you could ever figure out the logistics of such a deployment. With this all-or-nothing approach, your idea will never see the light of day.

Try this instead: find a small sub-unit with a willing leader. Test your idea there. As you learn that it’s a good idea, figure out how best to scale it. Your tiny success will fuel adoption. A few months or a few years from now, your idea will be a standard process.

Don’t memorize compliance training

I am currently creating a training module on the importance of trust in the workplace.

A colleague of mine suggested that we reverse the usual order of these modules. Instead of explaining what trust is and then testing our employees’ understanding through scenarios, she recommended that we let them struggle with the scenarios first.

It’s a simple idea and not a novel one. Yet, I haven’t seen it applied to E&C training. We typically give employees dozens of slides on a specific topic and then quiz them. In other words, we give them the answers first and see if they can remember them. It’s not the best form of learning. We see proof of this when employees violate rules they were trained on because, one year later, they don’t remember the training.

I look forward to trying this new approach. As a learner, I would prefer to discover rather than to memorize.

HT to Seth Godin

Giving – An ethical scale

Some companies give directly to charity.

Some companies ask their employees to give to charity via company-sponsored fundraising activities (ping-pong tournament, bake sale, etc.).

Some companies ask their suppliers to give to charity via company-sponsored events (golf tournament, silent auction, etc.).

Some companies ask their suppliers to give to charity  via company-sponsored events and, in exchange, suppliers receive access to company senior executives during the event. The more they give, the more generous the access.

Some companies ask their suppliers to give to charity in exchange for contracts.

Where does yours draw the line?

Your ethical story

There are mornings when I stare at my computer and don’t know what I will write about. I’ve written over 400 posts so it’s easy to feel like I’ve shared my viewpoint on every aspect of ethical culture and leadership. What could I possibly have to say that’s new? But I force myself to type a few words and soon I realize I haven’t even scratched the surface of my topic.

I suspect leaders feel the same way when asked to speak about the importance of ethics and compliance. No one wants to sound like a broken record. The trick, of course, is to tell the story of a seemingly small event that recently took place, one that necessitated the making of an ethical decision. The story will be different each time because every new day (or perhaps week) offers us such a story. Once the story is told, the leader can remind her followers about the ethical principle at play. Even if it’s the same ending every time, it will be a new lesson every time.

So go ahead and write another chapter of your ethical story today.

One kind person

A homeless kid is beaten up by a mob for stealing a mango. A kind man pays for the mango and breaks up the beating. The homeless kid grows up to create a non profit educating girls and providing clean water.

There is a less dramatic version of this story happening every day in the workplace. An employee who is different suffers discrimination, harassment or bullying at the hands of cowards.

All it takes to turn this around is one kind person.

Keep your fingers

In many countries, manufacturers are required by law to place instructions and warning labels directly on their products. This is why our lawn mowers have a label like this one:

Image result for lawn mower warning label

How did it start? With courts finding manufacturers liable for the injuries caused by their products. Courts realized that most people don’t read the instruction manual that comes with a product, and that those who do read them don’t always remember the warnings they contain six months or two years later. Courts essentially told the manufacturers that they could escape liability if they copied the warnings in the manual directly on the product, near the dangerous area.

There is a lesson here for those us responsible for ethics & compliance training. We all know that the standard model of classroom or online training is not the most effective. Plenty of employees who were trained on a specific policy end up violating that policy later on because they didn’t connect the dots between the training and the real situation they faced.

The solution offered by product liability law is to embed the training in the business activity itself. An online anti-corruption training is fine but it should be supported by an automated gift workflow that explains to the giver who is a government official, what can be gifted, what is the maximum amount permissible and who needs to approve the gift.

I do realize that there is real value in providing risk-based training. Employees need to understand the “why” behind our policies. But in the end, if we want compliance, we need to provide task-based training, i.e. training that is embedded in the activity that contains the risk.

This way, no one gets their fingers cut off.

Honesty in uncertainty

There are moments of uncertainty in every business. A merger, a divestiture, the death of a founder, a significant loss of market share, a fear of not making payroll next month.

In an effort to avoid panic, leadership will often tell employees they needn’t worry if they keep focussing on the work. Of course, this doesn’t alleviate anyone’s worry. In fact, it can makes things worse because employees now think that leadership knows something that they don’t. Something worth hiding.

Leadership should instead acknowledge the uncertainty and the fears. They should be honest about what they don’t know, why they don’t know it and when we can expect answers. Will some employees abandon ship, making the uncertainty greater? Maybe. But leadership should be OK with that if they truly care more about their employees than they do about the corporate entity.

Accepted violations become acceptable

I read the following quote in an article this morning:

“Employees will do what they witness routinely: what is common is moral.”

This pithy sentence explains why we should not tolerate inappropriate jokes, unwanted “light touching”, padded receipts, taking short breaks without clocking out, etc. When accepted, they become acceptable. Once normal, they open the door to more serious violations. It’s a downward spiral to the next scandal.

It also reinforces the importance of recognizing good behavior. Not for the sake of the one person who did the right thing but for the sake of the organization, so that everyone recognizes what good behavior we want to witness routinely.