Thanking the troops

I will be visiting Singapore and Sydney for business next week. I look forward to a warmer climate, the sights of green vegetation, the sounds of the ocean, and the flavors of the local cuisine. But most of all, I look forward to meeting my teammates in person.

I am blessed to support a team of 500 ethics & compliance officers (ECOs) operating in 100+ countries. They are the ones making it all happen. When the corporate office write a new policy, they are the ones deploying it and answering questions. When we create a new training module, they are the ones making sure all employees complete it. When an allegation of wrongdoing is made, they conduct or oversee the investigation. My efforts are meaningless without theirs.

If you have an ECO in your organization, please take a moment today to thank them for their work. They have a difficult but essential job.

Safety and trust

I have been thinking a lot lately about the concept of making employees feel safe. It’s new angle on the more traditional concept of trust. But it seems to go deeper. An employee who feels trusted by the organization (to do his job, to make decisions) may not necessarily feel safe in the organization.

An employee who feels safe can focus on her job instead of looking out for threats. She will be loyal, do her best, go the extra mile, protect the organization, and encourage others to join it. The last thing on her mind will be to engage in wrongdoing.

There are hundreds of ways to make employees feel safe and here’s an easy one for ethics & compliance professionals: meet with every new employee in person soon after they join the organization. Ask about them, where they came from, and what their new role is about. Tell them who you are, what you do, and that your main responsibility is to help them navigate ethical dilemmas and resolve compliance issues. Tell them that you hope they will never be in a tough spot but if they find themselves in one, you will be there to help.

And then let your example inspire other leaders in your organization.

Imagine a workplace where we all feel safe.

Compliance with all rules?

Do we want a compliant organization or one that does the right thing?

If we agree that we can’t have a rule for everything, and that two rules can conflict, then a compliant organization is not what we really want.

What we really want is an organization that asks a lot of questions because it wants to do the right thing, in every situation.

Including situations governed by an unjust rule.

HT to Seth Godin

Feeling safe: A key to employee retention

This post by Diane Stafford in the Kansas City Star includes several good tips on creating a positive corporate culture. Two caught my attention.

The first tip is to interview colleagues who sat next to the person who just quit. The theory is that many employees will not tell us the real reasons behind their departure, but their colleagues know. If we truly want to get better and prevent more exits, it’s worth asking.

This suggests that leaders should also ask similar questions before employees leave. Questions such as:

  • Are you enjoying the work that you do?
  • Do you have the resources necessary to do your job?
  • Is there an area of interest related to your job that you would like to explore?
  • Any thoughts on what this organization could do to strengthen its purpose?
  • What would you like to be working on in one year, three years?
  • What pressures do you feel at work that inhibit your performance?
  • What are the things that we currently do that you think we should stop doing?

The second tip is to “make employees feel trusted, respected and recognized for their contributions.” I would add one more concept, closely related to trust: make them feel safe. Employees who don’t feel safe work for their benefit, not that of the organization. And when this state of jeopardy lasts too long, they leave.

When we ask the questions listed above, we demonstrate that we care for our employees. In turn, they feel safer and are much more likely to stay with us and help us thrive.

Stoic patience

“The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.” – Marcus Aurelius

For ethics & compliance officers, what does it mean to “be patient with those who don’t?”

Does it mean that we should accept defeat when competitors cheat to win a contract? Or allow clients not to pay what is owed to us? Or look the other way when suppliers lie about their ability to deliver?

What about wrongdoing committed by those within our organization? Should we be patient when our own employees or agents violate our values?

This stoic directive simply means that we should not be shocked or upset when others breach our trust. We can hardly expect to go through life without someone wanting to take advantage of us. So why be surprised with it happens?

A stoic attitude is helpful to the ethics professional. It allows us to look at – and accept – the facts as they are, to calmly reach a decision that is just, and to administer justice in a respectful way. We can use our empathy to understand why others behave the way they do. That is an exercise in patience.

Our job is difficult enough without the additional burden of impatience, in its many forms.

Don’t let your employees guess what’s important

A front-line employee looks for cues about what is important to his boss. The boss, in turn, looks for cues about what’s important to her boss. And so on, so forth, all the way to the top. If doing things the right way is important to those at the top, the entire organization will enjoy an ethical culture.

How can those at the top demonstrate the importance they place on ethical behavior? Here are a few ideas:

  • They make their expectations clear, at every opportunity, whether in private or on social media. These expectations are discussed in the hiring process.
  • They extend trust to employees, allowing them to experiment and to fail on their way to success.
  • They help employees connect their individual work to the greater good created by the organization, to instill a sense of purpose.
  • They offer growth opportunities, tailored to each employee’s aspirations, fueling their potential.
  • They increase compensation and grant promotions only after a successful 360 evaluation based on ethical and compliant behavior.
  • They avoid the use of emotional and financial pressures to meet goals.
  • They ask employees how they intend to achieve their goals.
  • They separate from the company any employee engaged in a breach of trust – swiftly.

With actions like these, no one need to guess what is important to their boss.

The mental toughness of ethical leaders

In her post titled “Are you tough enough?”, Linda Henman describes what it takes to be a winner. How does this apply to ethical leaders?

Self-belief

We must believe in our ability and courage to make the right decision, even when it’s the hard decision.

Desire and motivation

We must want to win the right way. We look for markets that allow us to win on the merits of our products and services, following processes that don’t encourage bad behavior.

Performance-related focus

We see our ability to promote trust and integrity as a competitive advantage. Customers understand that how we do things is just as important to us as what we do.

Lifestyle-related focus

Ethical leaders behave with integrity on and off the job. We don’t flip a switch when we head to work in the morning.

A capacity to deal with competition-related pressure (external) and anxiety (internal)

In a world filled with VUCA, we understand that adaptive performance is more important than tactical performance. We recognize that we have a choice and that we labor for something greater than ourselves.

It’s never good to be bad

“You can’t change the people in your life. But you can change the people in your life.” – The Minimalists

In every organization, some people are rude, some are liars, some are bullies, some are cheaters. And many of them were promoted along the way. Which means they have no incentive to change because everything suggests that their success is linked to their bad behavior (which they don’t recognize as bad).

These people are toxic. They hurt performance. They make good people leave.

Most often, the only way out is to show them the way out.

Defensive driving class for business leaders

No organization can be exclusively values-based. We need rules and processes to operate efficiently.

Outside the business world, for example, we can’t allow millions of drivers to hit the road and simply ask them to drive safely (value = safety). We need to impose some basic rules defining what side of the road we drive on and who needs to stop at an intersection. These rules, coupled with safety, allow us to travel much faster.

In the business world, rules and processes allow us to move faster as well. But they can also provide a false sense of security. Just like a white line in the middle of the road does not prevent a car from traveling against traffic, a business process does not prevent all mistakes or wrongdoing. In other words, business people must adapt their driving based on the road conditions.

To push this analogy further (too far?), the ethical leader is like the instructor in a defensive driving class. Her role is not to prohibit all gifts to third-parties, or never to use sales agents, or not to operate in corrupt countries (although these actions might be necessary at times). Her role is to remind the organization that certain business conditions are more dangerous than other, and that processes alone won’t prevent head-on collisions.