Tag: Seth Godin

Soul purpose

In 1970, Milton Friedman wrote the following in his famous essay:

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

Like many, I am left completely uninspired by this statement. I would never want to devote my life – I’ll say that again – my LIFE to an organization with such a meaningless purpose.

Of course, my being uninspired is a selfish proposition. There are more noble arguments to criticize Friedman’s position, better expressed by the following business experts:

Right now, it’s 6 AM where I live. I will soon head to work, parting with my wife and three children for twelve hours or so. And I am grateful to work for an organization that doesn’t seek to increase profits as its sole purpose.

Building trust

There is only one right answer to 2 + 2. Any answer other than 4 is wrong.

In the world of laws, there are plenty of answers that are fair, just and reasonable under the circumstances. But each answer isn’t necessarily right at the exclusion of others.

In the ethics realm, things get even fuzzier. What is right is not even measured against an objective standard like the law. Two people who agree that a certain thing can be done will argue the question of whether it should be done.

As E&C professionals we must, of course, avoid the wrong answers. But we, and our business colleagues, must understand that there is no right answer.

The answer that builds trust is usually good enough.

HT to Seth Godin.

Do they believe what we believe?

Ethics & Compliance professionals spend a lot of time creating, communicating, and enforcing rules. We believe that we play a key role in protecting the organization and we take that role seriously.

And so we are sometimes baffled when an employee breaks a rule. How could they? We worked so hard to create this rule! We published it in the policy manual, we sent emails, we provided training, we explained why we have that rule, why the rule is important. What gives?!

Often, the problem is that we fell short. Communicating the rule is better than not communicating it. Providing training is better than not training. Explaining why the rule exists is better than just shoving it down their throat. But what if they don’t believe our “why”? What if they don’t care?

The best way to sell a “why”, to make employees care, is to link our rules to shared values. Employees who believe in delivering safe products to customers are willing to comply with a rule that requires parts testing. Employees who believe in winning sales the right way don’t mind a rule that requires vetting of sales agents. And so on. In a world of rules, a value is king.

Employees must believe what you believe.

HT to Seth Godin

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

What happens when you hit the red button?

button-308583_1280In today’s post, Seth Godin suggests that everyone should have a red button. When they hit the button, it should instantly alert the CEO or someone who willingly takes responsibility for what happens next. Godin says that people could hit the red button when facing sexual harassment, safety concerns, bribe requests, and the likes.

It’s a great idea. For many large organizations, the red button is a metaphor for their existing ethics & compliance program, staffed with dozens or hundreds of E&C professionals who jump into action when an allegation is made.

Godin’s post was aimed at organizations who don’t have a red button. For those who do, there are two questions to consider:

  1. Will our employees push the button?
  2. What will happen to them after they push the button?

The fear of retaliation is real. Retaliation is real.

The ethical leader will reduce the fear of retaliation by telling her employees that she wants to hear their concerns, by addressing those concerns in a meaningful and visible way, by rewarding those who come forward, and by not tolerating any form of retaliation.

If you face retaliation after hitting the red button, will you push it again to report the retaliation?

Don’t sell a better future

In his post today, Seth Godin explained why it’s almost impossible to sell the future. “When [humans] buy a stake in the future, what we’re actually buying is how it makes us feel today.”

This helps explain why it can be difficult to sell business leaders on the importance of improving the culture of an organization. What we are selling is the promise of a better workplace in the future, a future that is often years away. And, we add, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Not a great sales pitch.

Here’s an example. You work for an organization that goes to market via agents that are compensated exclusively with commissions that are only payable if they hit a stretch goal by year-end. Everyone in the industry works that way. This process eventually leads to a bad outcome and you (correctly) suggest that it needs to be changed. At the same time, you admit that many of the agents might quit and sales will go down in the short term. If you work for a publicly traded company, this won’t make anyone feel good. But, you say, after the bad agents leave and we consolidate our sales with the good agents and we create a reputation in the market for doing things right, then sales will pick up and we won’t need to spend money on fines and penalties, and we’ll have a workforce that feels good about how they do business.

Few companies take that path. Most who do are forced into it by a regulator – at great expense.

This is why writing a policy, providing training, adding internal controls, conducting audits are easier to sell after a failure. Business leaders can feel the immediate results. But none of these things actually change how we do things.

I had a boss who used to tell me “You need to explain how this is going to help them do their job.” I understood why this was important but I could never find a good answer. Now I realize that it’s because I was only selling them future, and even I was left on my appetite.

As E&C professionals, we need to figure out how to make our business leaders immediately taste the benefits of what we are selling.

Corporate culture and education

The best way to change a corporate culture is through education.

If we have something to teach, we identify someone who can benefit and teach them. And then we move on to the next person. This work may seem grinding – and it is – but it also scales. Educated people create other educated people.

Another way to scale culture change is to educate while changing a process. Processes, by their nature, affect groups. A change of process requires more than a new set of instructions. We must explain to others why we are changing a process. And therein lies our educational opportunity.

* Hat tip to Seth Godin.

The Embassy Analogy

I just returned from 3 days in New Orleans where I participated in the Ethics & Compliance Initiative’s Best Practices Forum. I was one of about 100 practitioners discussing how best to evaluate an E&C program.

During one of the roundtable discussions, a colleague asked how others deal with cultural differences around the world. When it was my turn to speak, I offered the “embassy analogy”.

When we walk into an embassy, we legally walk into a new country. The laws of the embassy’s country now apply to us. This is something we need to think about before we walk into an embassy.

Similarly, when we walk into our place of employment, we agree to follow the company’s rules and abide by its values. We might work in a country that doesn’t protect employee safety as much as our company, or allows employment discrimination based on race or gender, or doesn’t enforce its bribery laws. These “cultural differences” should be seen as irrelevant by ethical employers.

In a way, a company is like a tribe. My favorite definition of a tribe is: “People like us do things like this.”* If we refuse to pay bribes – or hurt the environment, or discriminate – people like us will come work for us and buy our products. Others won’t.  And that’s just fine because we don’t want them. Our goal is not to be a company that everyone wants to work for. We just want the people who share our values. Others can go work somewhere else. No one has to work for us.

This attitude should not be mistaken for a belief that our values are better than those adopted by other groups or organizations. Different values could be just as good. And, who knows, maybe we are living by the wrong set of values. The point simply is that we have intentionally chosen our values and living by them should be a condition of employment.

Do you agree with the embassy analogy? Let me know in the comment section below.

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*HT to Seth Godin