What is your highest-priority project at work today? What is it that your boss is looking for you to deliver on? If it’s that important to the organization, who else knows about it?

If the answer to the last question is not “All employees”, then it’s time to up your communication game. Write a two-paragraph blog post, get interviewed on your company’s podcast, produce a 30-second video with your phone. Get the word out to your employees.

Better yet, do the same externally and let the whole world know. We need to see your good work.

P.S.: Feel free to use the comment section below to share with us.

We call it the newspaper “test” because we don’t really expect our embarrassing behavior to be reported on the front page of the newspaper. We tell people “Imagine if…”

Some companies should have heeded this advice before attending the Presidents Club Charity Dinner at London’s Dorchester, especially after the many sexual harassment scandals of late 2017. There’s something about a 33-year tradition of men-only dinners, tainted with rumors of sexual improprieties, that should have raised some red flags back at the corporate headquarters. Those red flags were surely visible to the Financial Times when they decided to send a few undercover reporters to the event.

Being transparent used to be a choice. If we engaged in questionable behavior, we could choose not to be transparent. This ability to choose is quickly eroding. It’s eroding in part because  everyone now carries a powerful tracking, recording and publishing device in their pocket. But also because, quite frankly, we’ve had enough of certain behaviors.

You are about to acquire a new company.

What is most important to you?

• Its revenues
• Its customers
• Its products, services, IP
• Its location
• Its manufacturing footprint
• Its employees
• Something else

If its employees are not at the top of your list, carefully consider how you will achieve your other goals.

Those who wonder why some companies focus exclusively on the bottom line need only listen to an investor call. They’ll never hear a question about the company’s social responsibilities. It’s as if investors couldn’t care less.

Two days ago, we heard a shot in the dark. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, an investment firm controlling $6 trillion in assets, issued his annual CEO letter. In it, he tells CEOs of companies he’s invested in that they must be able to answer the following questions, so that his firm can understand their long-term strategy and their true value:

Companies must ask themselves: What role do we play in the community? How are we managing our impact on the environment? Are we working to create a diverse workforce? Are we adapting to technological change? Are we providing the retraining and opportunities that our employees and our business will need to adjust to an increasingly automated world? Are we using behavioral finance and other tools to prepare workers for retirement, so that they invest in a way that that will help them achieve their goals?

When these questions are suggested by academics, privately-held companies, or politicians, nothing more than a rigorous debate ensues. But when the largest investor in the world speaks up, action must be taken.

Let’s hope this is a tipping point.

According to a recent article in Forbes, one myth about corporate culture is that it is exclusively HR’s responsibility.

While it is true that how we hire and reward people does influence culture, every single process in an organization also plays a role. How we go to market is a process that can influence the culture of the entire organization. How a supervisor expects subordinates to respond to her Saturday morning texts immediately will affect that micro-culture.

Culture is an outcome of how we do things. Every negative aspect of a culture can be linked to a process, formal or informal, reduced to a policy or not. Identify and change that process, and you’ll change the culture.

We all can do this. We all must do this. HR cannot do it alone.

In his book Brain Rules, John Medina explains how humans evolved to get along with each other.

Human babies cannot survive on their own for many years after birth and cannot reproduce for well over a decade, so adults need to survive long enough to see their children pass the genes on. For most of our existence, the only way for an adult to survive was to be part of a tribe large enough to provide food and protection to its members.

Only recently has it become possible for grownups to survive on their own. Still, without family and friends and colleagues, their quality of life is questionable. The technologies that have allowed humans to leave the tribe have evolved faster than our survival instincts. We still long to fit in, to be appreciated, to give, to have a tribe.

Perhaps evolution will eliminate this longing over the millenia. But for now, we can take comfort in the fact that we are wired to get along. As E&C professionals, we deal with more deviant behaviors than most, and that can distort of view of the world. It’s worth reminding ourselves that almost everyone we know is kind and eager to do the right thing, for their benefit and for the group’s. Let’s keep those beautiful souls in mind when we create our policies, training, controls and other programs.