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FCPA Compliance Report

Tom Fox has practiced law in Houston for 30 years and now brings you the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Report. Learn the latest in anti-corruption and anti-bribery compliance and international transaction issues, as well as business solutions to compliance problems.
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Now displaying: 2017
Nov 30, 2017

I entitled this month’s podcast series as “360-degrees of communication in compliance” because it has occurred to me that you can have an ongoing discussion about compliance at all times. Previously, I had thought of communications really as a two-way street upward and downward inbound and outbound side to side. However, you might choose to phrase it, a 360-degree approach is something different. I do not think you communicate in just two ways any longer. I think you communicate in multiple ways. If you are just thinking about communications in the classic form you're missing something that is happening around you. 

360-degrees of communication and compliance is not just a classic form of communication but rather it's a communication in the concept of every interaction whether they be planned interactions or whether they be into or accidental interactions. It is all a form of communication. This is particularly true if you're a compliant professional a chief compliance officer or a compliant practitioner. The things you do the way people see you you're always communicating and it's not just communicating to one another often you're communicating to a group across group boundaries to the constituencies you had not even planned to initially communicate with. 

A 360-degree approach takes a much more holistic approach as opposed to just you and me; up and down inbound and outbound; side to side communication. Over this month, we have explored multiple forms of 360-degrees of communication, looked at social media, considered the concept of sharing. We have explored the clash of cultures and how communication a 360-degree approach to communication can help overcome that. We have discussed storytelling in compliance and teaching lawyers how to communicate and compliance. We have reviewed such leadership topics as persuasion, self-reliance and then multiplying the influence of compliance. 

We have also considered communicating across cultural boundaries how you can use social media tools such as Twitter even things that you might not consider a communication tool such as the supply chain and how innovation in your supply chain around communication can be used for your organization. You probably have not considered crowdsourcing as a form of 360-degrees of communication so. It has been a fascinating exploration and some of the things that I think he may not have considered as communication. 

Concepts such as utilizing communications to see around hard walls that because of a 360-degree approach you can certainly allow you to obtain more information. Communications can not only enhance your training but expand your training. If you think of all forms of communication as training you can quickly begin to see that your interactions with your employees are not only a form of training but they are really a form of ongoing communications and if you take the 360-degree approach you are continually communicating about your culture you're continually communicating about your values and your modeling for your employees the behaviors you want to see. So, think about expanding your training repertoire by making it not training but a 360-degree approach. 

Always remember that the Department of Justice looks at your training. But more importantly they look at your compliance communications. Never forget the 2012 Morgan Stanley declaration where they specifically pointed out 35 compliant reminders emailed to a recalcitrant employee over seven years. What if your communications is a 360-degree approach which allows you to document a continual form of communication and a continual stream of communication to your employee base. The government ever comes knocking. You have that record every time you utilize a social media tactic or technique, within behind your firewall or any other form of communication whether it be video, audio, e-mail, written document, or other. 

It is a very powerful way for you not only to get your message across but also for you to protect yourself and protect your organization. When you can utilize a tool or technique which not only helps you get your message out but also helps you to further protect the company that's a tool that I think is of high value to you.

I would like to end this month with a story that was told to me by Louis Sapirman, the CCO at Dunn & Bradstreet. And it happened to him in Argentina. Argentina has an interesting form of illegal conduct, which is an open black market for the changing of currency. Sapirman was with a colleague who was one of the leaders from the company's South American operations and they went into a convenience store. The person who was going to sell him the product suggested that he go just around the corner and change money on the black market where he could get a much better rate was almost a 100 percent difference in the exchange rate; he declined to do so. Sapirman paid and received the established bank right in the small transaction. 

He had not considered role modeling that compliance. About six months later one of his team members was in Mexico speaking to the leader of the Dunn and Bradstreet operation there. The non-compliance function employee said that he was the person who had been with Sapirman. He recounted the story of doing the right thing, when literally no one was watching. That is the power of 360-degrees in communication.   

Three Key Takeaways 

  1. 360-degrees of communication is a much broader manner of thinking about communications.
  2. You can use 360-degrees of communication to both see around walls and expand your training regime.  
  3. You are always communicating compliance. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 30, 2017

The top compliance roundtable podcast is back with a wealth of new topics. 

  1. Matt Kelly opens with a discussion the ongoing comments by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on compliance, the FCPA, the Yates Memo and asks: Has he really said anything?

For Matt Kelly’s posts on speeches of Rosenstein, see the following: 

DOJ Penalty Policy Under Review

Rosenstein Talks Yates Memo, Says Diddly 

  1. Jonathan Armstrong considers the Paradise Paper and what it means for the compliance practitioner. He contrasts this data dump with that of the Panama Papers and asks if companies should be called out for engaging in legal tax avoidance as opposed to illegal tax evasion. 
  1. Jay Rosen considers the number of recent comments about corporate monitors. He reviews statements by Rod Rosenstein, Dan Khan and Hui Chen. He explains the role of corporate monitors and how they can assist the compliance practitioner after an incident occurs or in a pro-active manner. 

To see the DOJ statements on monitors, see the Morford Memo, the Breuer Memo and Grindler Memo. 

  1. Mike Volkov returns to his DOJ roots as an anti-trust specialist in discussing the DOJ position in the ATT merger with Time Warner. He explains how both vertical and horizontal integration work in the context of an anti-trust matter; how the proposed sale of CNN would (or not) remedy anything and whether the President’s statements come into play.

 The gang is back with rants which follow the discussions. 

The members of the Everything Compliance panel include:

  • Jay Rosen– Jay is Vice President, Business Development Corporate Monitoring at Affiliated Monitors. Rosen can be reached at JRosen@affiliatedmonitors.com
  • Mike Volkov – One of the top FCPA commentators and practitioners around and the Chief Executive Officer of The Volkov Law Group, LLC. Volkov can be reached at mvolkov@volkovlawgroup.com.
  • Matt Kelly – Founder and CEO of Radical Compliance, is the former Editor of Compliance Week. Kelly can be reached at mkelly@radicalcompliance.com
  • Jonathan Armstrong – Rounding out the panel is our UK colleague, who is an experienced lawyer with Cordery in London. Armstrong can be reached at armstrong@corderycompliance.com
Nov 29, 2017

If there is one truism from the practices of law which translates to the practice of compliance it is that you are only limited by your own imagination. This holds true in the 360-degree realm of communication in compliance, as communications obviously comes in many forms. Many compliance practitioners will well remember the 2012 Morgan Stanley declination. In this first declination made public, the Justice Department recognized Morgan Stanley for emailing out 35 compliance reminders to Garth Peterson over seven years. Think about the power of 360-degrees of communications in the context of compliance reminders. Now imagine the power of these short ethics and compliance video training clips going out over the same period of time and the effect it would have both on your employees and the regulators.

Marc Havener is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Resonate Pictures, and Bryan Belknap, is the Creative Director. They jointly created a series of video shorts for a consulting company on compliance. Rather than the traditional legal approach of telling employees what the corporate policy about compliance, they wanted to tell a story about compliance through the art of movie based storytelling and that wove messaging into characters to tell a story.

They created a video training series using employees telling real stories which resonated with the workforce. Once these videos started getting released the employees who starred in the videos, became minor celebrities within the company. More importantly the episodes started becoming so popular that employees figured out how to view them in the system before the training videos were officially released. Employees would start watching these over the weekend before they were officially released internally because they wanted to know what was going to happen.

From this beginning these two gents built Resonate Pictures a supplier of movie clip based ethics and training videos which are widely popular. They recently released an eBook, entitled “How to Teach Ethics and Compliance with Hollywood Movie Clips”, in which they explain how and why ethics and compliance training using movie clips to get the concepts across can be a powerful training tool in the toolkit of the compliance practitioner. The eBook notes, “Movie clips will turn your surly team – the one that has reverted into eye-rolling teenagers when forced to sit through a lecture -- into alert, emotionally and intellectually engaged employees. Better yet, they’ll enjoy learning about ethics and compliance!” They list five reasons that this form of communication works and I believe creates another mechanism for you to think about 360-degrees of communication for your compliance program.

Create unforgettable teachable moments. Instead of having lawyers drone on, giving forgettable instructions on ethics, culture and honesty; they will clearly enjoy a scene of a star like Leonardo DiCaprio bluffing his way through his job as a medical doctor.

Place ethics and compliance training in tangible situations.Some people just do not understand concepts until they see them in action. For some employees, a clear directive like, “Don’t take bribes” might raise other questions such as “What if it’s non-monetary compensation? Or a gift? What if there’s no expectation of quid pro quo?”

Create a common language among employees. This means a cultural language across your employee base. By showing your employees the same movie clips, they will begin to create a shared language, a shorthand for ethical behavior that references the clips they’ve seen, where they hum the “Batman” theme when someone’s invading privacy or warn someone not to “pull a Clooney” with their expense reports. 

Provide a vicarious learning experience. This simply means people can learn by watching someone else and it is crucial because it means people can learn to avoid the bad/incorrect behavior they witness by another person and make the ethical move when they personally face a similar real life choice.

Create mental markers. Whatever ethics and compliance lesson you communicate with a movie clip it will live on beyond your classroom. If your employees ever see that clip again, your compliance lesson will pop back into their minds, reinforcing your point. Sprinkling in movie clips helps move your training outside the classroom and into employees’ everyday lives; so much so that eventually, they won’t be able to watch Television without spotting all the ethics and compliance moments in their favorite shows.

I have urged compliance practitioners to bring more storytelling into their compliance messaging. If you put the employee in the shoes of the person they’re watching, they will remember it, because will see how it applies to their lives. Havener noted the training experience will last “exponentially longer than if you just go over a written policy or show a PowerPoint”. He called it “expanding your classroom”. The next time they see George Clooney they’re going to remember the training, the next time they watch that movie that you showed a clip from they’re going to be reminded of the training and so it becomes a great drift method of training.”

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Storytelling is another form of 360-degrees of communication.
  2. Movie clips in compliance training can provide useful touchstones that employees can relate to for compliance lessons.  
  3. The Morgan Stanley declination gave credit for annual compliance reminders. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 29, 2017

In this episode, Matt Kelly and I consider the recent rejection by federal Judge William Young of the plea agreement in the matter of US v. Aegerion Pharmaceuticals. This criminal case stemmed from Aegerion’s launch of Juxtapid, which is a treatment for high cholesterol with an annual cost of more than $300,000. Almost immediately, Aegerion executives engaged in deceptive sales practices that around Juxtapid. The Justice Department brought two misdemeanor charges against Aegerion for selling misbranded drugs across state lines. Federal prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain where Aegerion—now under new management, and cooperating assiduously with federal authorities—would pay $6.2 million in fines and penalties, with no compliance monitor. The plea deal was a “C Plea,” where the judge can only accept or reject the agreement entirely.

In some incredibly scathing language, the judge not only rejected the deal but castigated the entire system of allowing corporations off the hook so lightly while not giving the same opportunities to individual defendants. Echoing some of the criticisms from Jesse Eisinger’s book The Chickenshit Club he faults the DOJ for its handling of corporate malfeasance. The judge does so by quoting Shakespeare, country music and ranges widely from the Yates Memo, to Russian interference in our election, to President Donald Trump calling our judicial system a laughingstock.

It is a delicious opinion and Matt and I go into the weeds to dissect i 

To read the judge’s opinion click here.

See Matt Kelly’s blog post Corporate Plea Bargains Under Fire Again

Nov 28, 2017

Planes, trains and automobiles can be three of the most important tools for any compliance professional. For it is through these transportation methods that you get out of the office and into the field to meet and talk with your stakeholders, both internal and external. This greatly facilitates a 360-degree use of communication. 360-degrees of communication considers not just that classic form of communication one person to another but rather the concept of every interaction as a form of communication. If you are out of your office, your internal and external stakeholder will see not only what you are communicating but how you are communicating. It is in these interactions, you are literally always communicating. It may be that you are communicating to a group across group boundaries to the constituencies which you had not even planned to communicate to or with. This means that a 360-degree approach to communication is much more holistic approach to communication. 

When you tie a 360-degree approach to ethical leadership you have a power tool to create a successful compliance program. But it is more than your commitment as a CCO or compliance practitioner. Senior management must not only be committed to doing business in compliance with these laws but they must communicate these commitments down to the organization. But leadership is not limited to only to senior management within an organization. Tone at the Top begets Tone in the Middle; which begets Tone at the Bottom. At each rung, there is the need for 360-degrees of compliance communications. In “Leadership is a Conversation”, authors Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind discuss how to improve employee engagement in today’s “flatter, more networked organizations.”  

It is the how leaders handle communications within their organizations that is as important as the message itself. The process should be more dynamic and more nuanced and should be conversational. It is a model of leadership which uses “organizational conversation” resembling ordinary person-to-person conversations. This model has several advantages, including that it allows a large company to function like a small one and it can enable leaders to “retain or recapture some of the qualities…that enable start-ups to out-perform better established rivals.” There are four elements of organizational conversation: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion and intentionality.  

Intimacy: Getting Close 

You should focus on two skills: listening and authenticity, because physical proximity may not always be feasible but emotional or mental proximity is required. As a corporate leader, a CCO should “step down from their corporate perches and then step up to the challenge of communicating personally and transparently with their people.” This technique shifts the focus of change from a top-down hierarchical model to a “bottom-up exchange of ideas.” 

Interactivity: Promoting Dialogue 

Interactivity should make a conversation open and more fluid. You can obtain this by talking with and not just talking to an employee. The purpose of interactivity builds upon the first prong of intimacy. The efforts to close the gap between employees will founder if both tools are not in place along with institutional support that gives employees the freedom and courage to speak up. Here social media can be a useful tool to help foster such interactivity, but take care not to simply use social media as another megaphone. It is more than just social media, it requires social thinking. 

Inclusion: Expanding Employees Roles 

Following on from intimacy is inclusion as intimacy should force a leader to get closer to employees while inclusion challenges the employee to play a greater role in the communication process. Inclusion expands on interactivity by enabling employees to put forward their ideas rather than simply batting the ideas to others who might be a part of the conversation. This brings employee engagement into the 360-degree process by calling on employees to generate the content that validates a company’s value. Employees who become committed to a message can become the best brand ambassadors that a company can ever hope to have on its payroll. 

Intentionality: Pursuing an Agenda 

While the first three prongs of this model focus on opening the flow of communication, intentionality is designed to bring a measure of closure to the process. The goal here is to have voices merge into a single vision of what the company’s communication stands for. In other words, the conversation should reflect a “shared agenda that aligns with the company’s strategic objectives” that will allow employees to “derive a strategically relevant action from the push and pull of discussion and debate.” The role here for leaders is to “generate consent rather than commanding assent” for a strategic objective. This enables employees at the top, middle and bottom to gain a 30,000-foot view of where their company stands on any issue which has gone through the process. 

The 360-degree approach requires you to be cognizant of how communications works wherever you are and in whatever medium you are communicating. It also focuses on the cultural differences that exist across borders, recognizing that cultural differences sometimes they exist within the same office or across a team. It is having as much awareness as possible of the audience you are communicating to so that you ensure the messages that you are trying to get through and the information you are trying to gain from that audience is gained in the most effective way possible. You need to be comfortable changing the way you approach different people with different cultures. 

Three Key Takeaways 

  1. Planes, trains and automobiles.
  2. Use a 360-degree approach to open the flow of communications.
  3. A 360-degree approach allows all company stakeholders to get the big picture.

 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 28, 2017

In this episode, Richard Lummis and consider the leadership lessons from the Presidency of US Grant. The lessons include:
1. Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Acts, leading to the passage of the 15th Amendment;
2. Appointment of minorities to his cabinet and other top government positions;
3. His Indian peace policy. At the start of his administration there were 370 separate treaties with Native Americans. Grant streamlined this process and appointed a Seneca Indian as head of the BIA; and
4. Foreign Affairs. We consider Grant's leadership in the dispute with Great Britain over claims against the Confederate raider Alabama.

Nov 27, 2017

One area which most particularly lends itself to a 360-degree approach to communications is in the area of corporate culture. The more you can operationalize compliance, the more it works to operationalize culture in your organization. It works for all levels of a company, literally from the Boardroom to the shop floor. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recognized this when they noted in their 2012 FCPA Guidance that “A compliance program should apply from the board room to the supply room—no one should be beyond its reach.” Yet culture can provide more than simply an ethical foundation, it is also a part of the business foundation of an entity.

In “Corey E. Thomas of Rapid7 on Why Companies Succeed or Fail”,  Adam Bryant interviewed Corey Thomas of the national security firm Rapid7. They considered why companies with smart, dedicated and motivated employees still fail. Unsurprisingly it all starts with culture. Thomas noted, “the culture of a company can make a huge difference. The culture can accentuate the collective, or it can be a distraction. If it’s a distraction, it can make everyone worse than they would be, either individually or in small groups.” Thomas believes this is because “smart and talented people have the capability to do some really phenomenal things or some really destructive things. And so culture ends up mattering to a huge degree.”

Yet it is even more sophisticated, as part of culture includes cohesiveness. Thomas noted, “Do the culture and the people and the company’s business line up and make sense? Sometimes you find significant inconsistencies. You might have a group of hard-charging, goal-oriented people, but what if their job is to figure out a market solution? Maybe they can’t do it because they’re better at executing than at being creative. So the teams need to be cohesive, but they can’t be monolithic, because teams with the same kind of people miss more. More diverse teams can see around corners because they have different perspectives.”

Using such a 360-degree approach to communication, allows a CCO to “see around corners” and can be one of the greatest strengths of a best practices compliance program. The reason is listening. Listening is a key leadership component and there are certainly many ways to listen. You can sit in your office and wait for a call or report on the hotline or you can go out into the field and find out what challenges employees are facing. From this you can work with them to craft a solution that works for the company and holds to the company’s ethical and compliance values.

Dun & Bradstreet CCO Louis Sapirman has often discussed his innovative use of a tool called Chatter, which he uses to engage D&B employees in a manner similar to Twitter in a virtual worldwide Tweet-up. He has created an internal company brand in the compliance space, using the moniker #dotherightthing, which trends in the company’s Chatter environment. He also uses this hashtag when he facilitates a Chatter Jam, which is a real-time social media discussion. He puts his compliance team into the event and they hold it at various times during the day so it can be accessed by D&B employees anywhere in the world.

He said that he ‘seeds’ Chatter Jam so that employees are aware of the expectations and to engage in the discussion respectfully of others. When they began these sessions he reminded employees that if they had specific or individual concerns they should bring them to Sapirman directly or through the hotline. However, he does not have to make this admonition any more, as everyone seems to understand the ground rules. Now this seeding only relates to the topics that each Chatter Jam begins with going forward. Sapirman emphasized that these events allow employees the opportunity to express their opinions about the compliance function and what compliance means to them in their organization. One of these discussions was around the company’s Code of Conduct. He said that employees wanted to see the words “Do The Right Thing” as the name of the Code of Conduct.

Using such tools a CCO can move towards Thomas’ next key ingredient of a successful corporate culture; which is trust. Thomas said, “I’m obsessive about the culture that we create specifically around trust, and this is an adjustment for some people when they come here. If you join our team, there’s trust by default here. That means you trust in the competence of your teammates. You trust in their intentions and what they’re saying. At some companies, the culture is that trust is earned over time, but that means if everyone in the organization says you have to earn trust, the amount of energy that actually goes into the trust-earning process is a distraction from our mission.”

This part dovetails into what Barbara Brooks Kimmel, Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder of Trust Across America - Trust Around the World, continually reminds us of from her site. Moreover, Kimmel finds that trust is good for the bottom line. As reported in, “Return on Trust: The “State of Trust” 2016”, Trust Across America found “During the three-year period from February 2013-February 2016 America’s most trustworthy public companies outperformed the S&P 500 according to the actual composite audited performance shown below and reprinted with permission of Facts Asset Management, LLC. This was not a “test” but rather “real” money under management, followed by an independent audit verifying the returns. Trust works as a business strategy.”

I found the Thomas interview fascinating as it moved corporate culture to the forefront of the business of an organization. A CCO can help to facilitate this moving forward by working to inculcate the right type of culture in their organization, which follows the DOJ’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs discussion of how operationalization of compliance is a further way of thinking about moving compliance and culture more deeply into a company.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Business crisis almost always begin with a culture failure.
  2. Use a 360-degree approach to communication to see around the corners.
  3. Trust works as a business strategy. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 27, 2017

In this episode, I visit Jonathan Benson, Vice President of Product Development at ShoCard. Businesses must adopt solutions which keep information secure. Moreover, there is an ongoing need to ensure they are still in compliance. This episode provides a fascinating exploration of how innovation in one sector can impact the greater compliance profession. 

We discuss ShoCard’s use of blockchain to facilitate identity management. We begin with a brief explanation of is blockchain. Benson explains how blockchain can help commercial businesses with identity management and help financial institutions in their KYC obligations. We explore how can it help to reduce fraud and improve overall AML management and the scalability of the ShoCard solution. Finally, Benson explains that when large databases of personal information need to be maintained, they are vulnerable to attacks.

For more information on ShoCard’s solution, go to their website, by clicking here.

Nov 26, 2017

Adam Bryant recently retired from the Corner Office column after 10 years on the post. Fans of this podcast know we use many of his articles as jumping off points for many of our podcasts. To commemorate his 10 years of studying business leaders, Bryant published a long-from piece in the New York Times for his final article. It was entitled, “How to be the Big Boss-Lessons form a Decade of Interviewing CEOs”. As a tribute to Bryant, Richard Lummis and I will explore many of the lessons Bryant has drawn. In this first podcast we discuss three keys that Bryant has observed: (1) applied curiosity; (2) enjoying discomfort; and (3) career management.

Nov 22, 2017

One of the greatest things about the compliance profession is that it is only limited by its collective imagination. If you can think it up, you can probably do it. This has led not only continuing evolution of compliance programs but continuing innovation in the compliance function. As compliance programs evolve and innovate, regulators take note and the cycle becomes almost a continuous feedback loop. One technique new to compliance but squarely in the 360-degree view of communication is internal crowdsourcing, to enlist new ideas from employees, to open new sources of compliance innovation.

Internal corporate crowdsourcing was explored in  “Developing Innovative Solutions through Internal Crowdsourcing, where the authors noted, “It allows employees to interact dynamically with coworkers in other locations, propose new ideas, and suggest new directions to management. Because many large companies have pockets of expertise and knowledge scattered across different locations, we have found that harnessing the cognitive diversity within organizations can open up rich, new sources of innovation. Internal crowdsourcing is a particularly effective way for companies to engage younger employees and people working on the front lines.” They came up with seven key elements companies should use to aid in moving such an effort forward, which apply forcefully to the CCO and compliance practitioner.

  1. Keep the focus on innovation. You should use this technique for long-term initiatives and not short-term improvements. Establish the grounds for employee creativity with criteria such as (1) ability to meet employees’ unmet needs, (2) delighting the employee, (3) the solution’s newness, (4) marketability, (5) commercial viability, and (6) scalability.
  2. Give internal crowdsourcing participants slack time. If your company wants you focused solely and only on your day job, it will, by definition, limit your participation in a company crowdsourcing project to nights and weekends. This may not be when and where you do your best work. Companies must arrange to allow employees the time and space during working hours to participate meaningfully.
  3. Allow for anonymous participation. Trust is always a key issue in these types of project. Anonymous participation can help build and maintain that trust because when organizational identities are revealed in an internal crowdsourcing project, “some individuals may feel compelled to defend their formal positions.” Companies need to ensure participants “feel safe about contributing knowledge, regardless of their seniority or role in the company.”
  4. Take steps to ensure that company experts don’t exert their influence too heavily. Internal company experts will have their ideas given additional heft if their identities are known. This can have the unintended effect of intimidating others or lessening their voices in the process. Yet you must work to keep the process open to diverse perspectives, for internal crowdsourcing to produce innovative outcomes. You should have the company’s compliance experts operate as moderators and to do what they can to encourage others to come up with compliance innovations.
  5. Use a collaborative process for internal crowdsourcing. Much like Louis Sapirman’s use of social media to communicate with and obtain information from D&B’s employee base, use of an internal crowdsourcing project has the positive by-product of engagement, stating, “It’s also to build a system through which people within the organization share knowledge, learn from one another, and offer pertinent knowledge for use in new solutions.” If you can engage your employees in compliance, you will not only have a better chance of keeping them engaged, but you will also more fully burn compliance into the fabric of your organization or operationalize compliance in your organization.
  6. Design platforms that facilitate shared development and evolution of solutions. A key to internal crowdsourcing success draws inspiration from open source software. It is that employees need to see what other employees have contributed so they can build upon it. You must find a way to share knowledge among the employee base on an ongoing basis. The authors found three major benefits to such an approach: “(1) knowledge sharing among the crowd across a variety of knowledge types (not just ideas); (2) the opportunity for coevolution of solutions by the crowd; and (3) the degree to which feedback from the crowd helps to refine ideas.”
  7. Be transparent about plans for follow-up post-crowdsourcing. Not surprisingly, one major defect around internal crowdsourcing projects is lack of follow-up and lack of transparency for the employee participants. Simply put, employees not only want to know the results but they also want to know if their ideas were used. This can be a powerful motivator for future participation or the opposite. Companies need to make the process open and fair.

By internally outsourcing compliance function enhancements, a CCO can increase employee engagement in compliance. The entire process draws from your diverse employee base which brings both organizational learning and knowledge diffusion into the continuous improvement of your compliance program. Just as the data in your organization is your data, so you should not only utilize it but monetize it; your employee base can be a large and untapped source of information which can more readily be implemented and have a more rapid impact on your compliance program going forward.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. In compliance, you are only limited by your imagination.
  2. Build trust and be transparent in your process.
  3. Through internally outsourcing compliance function enhancements, a CCO can increase employee engagement in compliance. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 20, 2017

One of the ways that CCOs and compliance practitioners can better use 360-degrees of communication is through Twitter. In “How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas”, authors Salvatore Parise, Eoin Whelan and Steve Todd found “employees with a diverse Twitter network – one that exposes them to people and ideas they don’t already know – tend to generate better ideas.” Their research led them to three interesting findings: (1) Employees who used Twitter had better ideas than those who did not do so; (2) There was a link between the amount of diversity in employees’ twitter networks and the quality of their ideas; and (3) Twitter users who combined idea scouting and idea connecting were the most innovative. 

I do not think the first point is too controversial or even insightful as it simply confirms that persons who tend have greater curiosity tend to be more innovative. The logic is fairly-straightforward, good ideas emerge when new information received is shared with what a person already knows. In today’s digitally connected world, the amount of information in almost any area is significant. Yet by using Twitter, “the potential for accessing a divergent set of ideas is greater.”

The key concept for the compliance profession are the roles of Idea Scout and Idea Connector. An idea scout is an employee who looks outside the organization to bring in new ideas. An idea connector, is someone who can assimilate the external ideas and find opportunities within the organization to implement these new concepts.” It is the ability to identify, assimilate and exploit new compliance ideas, which makes this concept so powerful. However to improve your compliance innovation, “you need to maintain a diverse network while also developing your assimilation and exploitation skills.”

For the compliance practitioner, Twitter is a gateway to solution and a way to obtain different perspectives and to challenge the status quo in one’s thinking. The key is not your number of followers on Twitter but rather the diversity within your Twitter network, as “Diversity of employee’s Twitter network is conductive to innovation.” An Idea Scout will “identify external ideas from experts and resources on Twitter.” The compliance practitioner can take advantage of experts within the anti-corruption compliance field, but there is an equally rich source of innovation from those outside this arena.

Even with modern social media tools, the first key to good leadership is to listen. Listening can be enhanced, through the “breadcrumb” approach of finding innovation leaders and thought-provokers. This entails listening to colleagues and industry leaders who are Twitter “including what they are tweeting about, who they are following and replying to on the platform, who is being retweeted often”.

Equally important to this Idea Scout is the Idea Connector, who is putting the disparate strands from tweets together. For the compliance function, this will be someone who identifies compliance best practices or other information from Twitter ideas, can then put them together and direct the information to the relevant company stakeholders. Finally, such a person can “Curate Twitter ideas and matches them with company resources needed to implement them.”

There are a variety of ways an Idea Connector can use Twitter. One is to try to sift through your Twitter feed and look for trends and relationships between topics. You bring value when you stamp your own analysis and interpretation on it. Another method is to focus on analytics and one user “filtered specific subsets of the topic for different stakeholders” at his company. Another method was to create “social dashboards or company blogs based on the insight” received thought Twitter. Interesting, one of the key requirements for successfully mining Twitter was in finding ways to share its content “since many employees, especially baby-boomers don’t use the platform themselves.” Conversely by mining information from Twitter and presenting it, this can allow these ‘technologically challenged’ older employees to ascertain how they can target millennial’s.

But as much as these concepts can move a CCO or compliance practitioner to innovation in a compliance program, it can also foster additional communication through the following of your own employees. It is well known that Twitter can facilitate greater communication to and between the compliance function and its customer base, aka the company employees. The use of Twitter to enable this same type of innovation because it “is different than email and other forms of information sources in that it enables continuous engagement”.

Twitter was created to allow people to connect with one and other and communicate about their activities. However the marketing potential was immediately seen and used by many companies. Now a deeper understanding of its use and benefits has developed. For the compliance practitioner one thing you want to consider is to align your Twitter and great social media strategy with your compliance strategy; match your Twitter strategy to your compliance strategy.

Twitter can be powerful tool for the compliance practitioner. It is one of the only tools that can work both inbound for you to obtain information and insight and in an outbound manner as well; where you are able to communicate with your compliance customer base, your employees. You should work to incorporate one or more of the techniques to help you burn compliance into the DNA fabric of your organization.

 Three Key Takeaways

  1. Twitter can be powerful tool for the compliance practitioner.
  2. Data mine twitter for not only best practices but see what the regulators may be saying.
  3. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it makes for a far better and more effective compliance practitioner.

 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 20, 2017

We have a bit of a compliance smorgasbord of topics this week. I was in London and sat down to be  interviewed by Jonathan Armstrong, a partner at Cordery Compliance, at the law firm offices in London. We consider when disruptive companies should institute a compliance program, even during its start up phase. Does the simple fact it is disruptive make compliance antithetical to its business approach. We both believe that disruptives and start-ups need to institutionalize compliance sooner rather than later. We then consider the disruptions of political events such as the ongoing antics of the Trump Administration and continued non-negotiations in the Brexit miasma. We discuss where might compliance be going in the future. We conclude with a discussion of the internationalization of anti-corruption investigations and enforcement and why compliance is the key to wading through the minefield of multiple jurisdictions and regulators. 

Nov 17, 2017

Jay and I return for a wide-ranging discussion on some of the top compliance and ethics related stories of the week, including: 

  1. The DOJ/SEC FCPA Guidance turned 5 years old this week. For the compliance practitioner, it is the seminal document on how to do compliance. See Tom’s article in the FCPA Compliance Report.
  2. Wal-Mart reserves $283MM to settle its outstanding FCPA matter. See article by Dick Cassin in the FCPA Blog. Henry Cutter reports in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Journal.
  3. Tom Fox and Matt Kelly explore the intersection of shareholder activism and the structure of a compliance program. See Matt’s blog posts on Radical Compliance Part I and Part II. See Tom’s blog post here. Finally Tom and Matt took a deep dive into the issue in Episode 60 of Compliance into the Weeds.
  4. The FIFA trial is ongoing in NYC. It has featured anonymous jurors, threat against witness and claims that Fox Sports paid bribes. See stories in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Report, The Daily Mail, and Reuters.
  5. Mike Volkov has a four-part series on putting ethics back into corporate culture. Part I; Part II; Part III and Part IV.
  6. Tom visited with Marc Havener and Bryan Belknap about using movie clips to expand your compliance training classroom. See Tom’s blog post here.
  7. Will there ever be another corruption conviction of a politician in the US? Sam Rubenfeld explores this question in light of the hung jury in the Menedez mistrial in WSJ Risk and Compliance Journal.
  8. SEC report indicates hundreds of millions in whistleblower bounty awards coming. See article in National Law Review.
  9. Join Tom’s monthly podcast series on One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program. In November, I consider how a 360-degree view of communications can enhance your compliance program. This month’s sponsor is the Dun & Bradstreet. It is available on the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube and JDSupra.
  10. The Everything Compliance gang put together an eBook of their reflections from the recent SCCE 2017 Compliance and Ethics Institute. It is available for download free on JDSupra.
Nov 17, 2017

Other than the skill of listening, asking questions is about as important to the compliance practitioner as any other that can be employed. Yet, equally critical is to ask the right question, which is an issue explored Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman explored this concept in their book “From a Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life.

Grazer is a well-known and successful Hollywood director who has directed such movies as Splash, A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man. He believes that much of the success he has achieved is because he asks lots of questions and that “Questions are a great management tool.” This is because “Asking questions elicits information” and it also “creates the space for people to raise issues they are worried about that a boss, or colleagues, may not know about.” By asking questions, you allow “people to tell a different story than the one you’re expecting.” Finally, and perhaps most significantly, “asking questions means people have to make their case for the way they want a decision to go.”

Getting your employees to not simply talk to you but tell you the truth about how they feel or what they may be thinking is a key skill for any leader. As a CCO, you may find this particularly difficult in far-flung reaches of an international company, which is subject to the FCPA, UK Bribery Act or other anti-bribery/anti-corruption law. Whether you are performing a risk assessment or simply getting out of the corporate home office, you need to be able to engage employees across the globe and from a variety of cultures.

Ask open-ended questions so you will not receive back a simple Yes/No answer. Some key foundational questions include, “What are you focused on? Why are you focused on that? What are you worried about? What is your plan?” By asking these or other questions, such as “What are you hoping for? What are you expecting? What’s the most important part of this for you?” as a CCO, you can get much more engagement from the people with whom you work.

Consider pursuit of a high profit deal in a high-risk geographic area. You might want to sit down with the business unit person in charge of the project and ask them, what is your plan to sign this contract and execute it, consistent with your obligations within the company’s compliance program? In doing so you are communicating two key concepts, using a 360-degree approach. First, you make clear there should be a plan in place. Second, you are make clear the employee is in charge of that plan. Therefore, by simply asking the question, you are communicating the employee has both the responsibility for the problem and the authority to come up with the solution. This type of approach allows those who so desire to step up to do so, as “It’s a simple quality of human nature that people prefer to choose to do things rather than be ordered to do them.”

Equally important are the values you can transmit by asking questions. If you do have to fly to China or some other local office, you do not want to be seen as the US corporate executive coming to deliver some bad news or that costs need to be cut. By asking questions you can solicit ideas to help solve problems. This is because asking questions creates the authority in people to come up with ideas, coupled with the responsibility for moving things forward. Questions create space for all kinds of ideas and the sparks to come up with those ideas. Most important, questions send a very clear message: We’re willing to listen, even to ideas or suggestions or problems we weren’t expecting.” This is not about being warm or fuzzy, it is demonstrating curiosity in the employee.

You should also consider asking questions in the context of 360-degrees of communication. Louis Sapirman has made clear this concept is more than simply a two-way; up and down approach. It really demonstrates not only a level of knowledge but the communication itself important in every other direction in the workplace. People should ask their bosses questions. If employees feel comfortable enough to ask these questions, it allows CCO to be clear about things that they think are clear, but more importantly which may not be clear at all. Finally, if a person asks a question, they most usually listen to the answer. This is because “People are more likely to consider a piece of advice, or a flat-out instruction, if they’ve asked for it in the first place.”

You too can use this simple and straight-forward technique to improve not only your leadership qualities in the compliance function but your organization’s compliance function as well. The reason that asking questions is so much better than simply giving orders is that you have a vast talented workforce you can tap into it help you do business in compliance. But the how of doing a business process that is, or should be, burned into your company can be facilitated by possibilities that are out there in your employees’ minds.  360-degrees of communications allows you to create an atmosphere where nobody is afraid to ask a question. Perhaps equally importantly no one is afraid to answer a question.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Asking questions is a great technique to elicit information.
  2. Asking questions creates the authority in people to come up with ideas, coupled with the responsibility for moving things forward.
  3. Create an atmosphere where no employee is afraid to ask or answer a question. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 16, 2017

In the episode, I consider two different issues around communication skills. The first is communicating across cultural boundaries.  The second is the technique of asking questions to boost leadership. One of the things most critical issues to a compliance function is breaking through a company’s internal cultural boundaries. In an article by Erin Meyer, entitled, “Getting to Si, Ja, Oui, Hai and Da; How to negotiate across cultures”, she explained that “managers often discover that perfectly rational deals fall apart when their [business] counterparts make what seem to be unreasonable demands or don’t respect their commitments.” She laid out a five-point solution for communicating across a multi-national organization.

Initially look for as many cultural bridges as you can find as it will help you understand what your international audience is communicating to you, in both verbal and non-verbal formats, during a wide variety of activities familiar to any compliance professional such as training, investigations or simple meetings where the compliance perspective must be articulated in any business setting. If you fail to have an understanding or even a person who can navigate these signs for you, here are five steps to help you out: (1) Adapt the way you express disagreement; (2) Know when to bottle it up and let it all pour out; (3) Learn how the other culture builds trust; (4) Avoid yes or no questions; and (5) Be careful about putting it in writing.

Asking Questions

Other than the skill of listening, asking questions is about as important to the business leader as any other that can be employed. Yet, equally critical is to ask the right question, which is an issue explored Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman explored this concept in their book “From a Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life”.

Grazer is a well-known and successful Hollywood director who has directed such movies as Splash, A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man. He believes that much of the success he has achieved is because he asks lots of questions. Indeed, the authors write, “Questions are a great management tool.” This is because “Asking questions elicits information” and it also “creates the space for people to raise issues they are worried about that a boss, or colleagues, may not know about.” Further, by asking questions, you allow “people to tell a different story than the one you’re expecting.” Finally, and perhaps most significantly, they said, “Most important from my perspective, asking questions means people have to make their case for the way they want a decision to go.”

Getting your employees to not simply talk to you but tell you the truth about how they feel or what they may be thinking is a key skill for any leader. Ask open-ended questions so you will not receive back a simple Yes/No answer. Some key foundational questions include, “What are you focused on? Why are you focused on that? What are you worried about? What is your plan?” By asking these or other questions, such as “What are you hoping for? What are you expecting? What’s the most important part of this for you?” as a CEO, you can get much more engagement from the people with whom you work.

Nov 16, 2017

A 360-degree approach to communications entails looking at all forms of interactions as a way to interconnect. This means both verbal and non-verbal and in clues, hints in addition to directly. This concept can be particularly helpful in relating to and with cultures outside the United States as one of the things most critical issues to a compliance function is breaking through a company’s internal cultural boundaries. In “Getting to Si, Ja, Oui, Hai and Da; How to negotiate across cultures”, Erin Meyer explained that “managers often discover that perfectly rational deals fall apart when their [business] counterparts make what seem to be unreasonable demands or don’t respect their commitments.” She laid out a five-point solution that I have adapted for the CCO or compliance practitioner in communicating a compliance program across a multi-national organization.

Initially look for as many cultural bridges as you can find as it will help you understand what your international audience is communicating to you, in both verbal and non-verbal formats, during a wide variety of activities familiar to any compliance professional such as training, investigations or simple meetings where the compliance perspective must be articulated in any business setting. If you fail to have an understanding or even a person who can navigate these signs for you, here are five steps to help you out: (1) Adapt the way you express disagreement; (2) Know when to bottle it up and let it all pour out; (3) Learn how the other culture builds trust; (4) Avoid yes or no questions; and (5) Be careful about putting it in writing.

Adapt the way you express disagreement

Simply because someone disagrees with you, it is not a sign that the discussion is going poorly but that it is an invitation to engage in a lively talk. The key is to listen for verbal cues when interacting. These sources are “what linguistics experts call “upgraders” and “downgraders.” Upgraders are words you might use to strengthen your disagreement, such as “totally,” “completely,” “absolutely.” Downgraders - such as “partially,” “a little bit,” “maybe” - soften the disagreement.” It is incumbent to understand upgraders and downgraders within their own cultural context.

Know when to bottle it up and let it all pour out

Some cultures have very demonstrative ways of speaking and gesturing. However other cultures are not comfortable with such displays. You need to understand this key difference. Meyer writes, “So the second rule of international negotiations is to recognize what an emotional outpouring (whether yours or theirs) signifies in the culture you are negotiating with, and to adapt your reaction accordingly. Was it a bad sign that the Swedish negotiators sat calmly across the table from you, never entered open debate, and showed little passion during the discussion? Not at all. But if you encountered the same behavior while negotiating in Israel, it might be a sign that the deal was about to die an early death.”

Learn how the other culture builds trust

Most Americans think that building trust in a business setting is gained by demonstrating your usefulness and competency in providing solid information. However, this type of approach is not always the most effective across the globe. There are two different approaches to building trust:  cognitive and affective.

In the cognitive approach, you gain trust by “the confidence you feel in someone’s accomplishments, skills and reliability.” In short, you know your stuff and for the compliance practitioner there is usually not much higher a compliment. This type of trust is more valued by Americans, Germans, Australians and Brits. Meyer says this is the trust that comes from the head. Conversely, affective trust may be termed to come from the heart. But it is not simply emotive. It derives from “emotional closeness, empathy, or friendship.” It means that you see each other on a personal level. In the BRIC countries, Southeast Asia, trust of this type is not likely to be achieved until this type of connection can be made.

Some of the techniques you can employ to build trust are to, “Invest time in meals and drinks (or tea, karaoke, golf, whatever it may be), and don’t talk about the deal during these activities. Let your guard down and show your human side, including your weaknesses. Demonstrate genuine interest in the other party and make a friend. Be patient: In China, for example, this type of bond may take a long time to build. Eventually, you won’t have just a friend; you’ll have a deal.”

Avoid yes or no questions

This is something Americans have an innate amount of trouble getting our heads around. Most generally when we ask a direct question requiring a direct Yes-or-No answer; we expect that whichever the answer is, it will be adhered to going forward. In many other cultures that may not always be correct. In some cultures, it is rude to tell someone you respect and have trust for ‘No’ directly. While they may say ‘Yes’, they may really mean ‘No’. Conversely, even when the verbal response is a strong or even a multiple ‘No’ answer, it may simply mean that the party needs more time to respond.

This means you should try to avoid a simple Yes-or-No response, by asking a more open question that elicits additional information that will help provide the context for the answer. You should also watch body language and other signals more closely, “Even if something is affirmative, something may feel like no: an extra beat of silence, a strong sucking of breath” or a muttering. Be watchful and listen closely.

Be careful about putting it in writing

This last point may be the most difficult for the CCO and compliance practitioner, especially if you accept my mantra to Document, Document, and Document. In many cultures, even the follow up to a conversation with something in writing could well seem like a slap in the face, the lack of trust or even communicating that the listener did not comprehend what you were communicating. You may need to do some additional amount of explanation around your written compliance documentation. Do not be dogmatic about it, but emphasize the need for written materials in the appropriate situation.

Communications in compliance must be largely drawn around trust. For any compliance practitioner, this is a key to working with your employee base across the globe. Implicit in building trust is that you get out of your home office and travel to your other office locations. While you can build cognitive trust through demonstrating your usefulness to an overseas business unit from your home office in America, you will never build affective trust sitting in the corporate office. Get out and about and meet your employees and build the trust that will allow a successful a 360-degree approach to communication.

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Communications in compliance must be largely drawn around trust.
  2. Look for as many cultural bridges as you can find as it will help you understand what your international audience is communicating to you.
  3. One of the things most critical issues to a compliance function is breaking through a company’s internal cultural boundaries. 

 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 15, 2017

What if you could multiple the impact and effectiveness of your compliance program throughout your company? That would be a great boon to any compliance practitioner and compliance program. It is also something that is very possible by considering a 360-degree view of communications in compliance using multipliers. 

Liz Wiseman is the co-author with Greg McKeown of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, which is a book about the various types of leaders. They focus two different types of leaders, Diminishers and Multipliers. Multipliers are leaders who encourage growth and creativity from their workers, while Diminishers are those who hinder and otherwise keep their employees’ productivity at a minimum. 

These techniques not only beneficial for every Chief Compliance Officer to use as a business leader within your organization, but also for every compliance practitioner to more fully operationalize corporate compliance programs. The also help you to understand more fully the concept of 360-degrees of communication because in every interaction you can multiply the power of your communication by using a variety of simple and even straight-forward tools and techniques. 

Multipliers increase, often exponentially, the intelligence of the people around them through communication. They lead organizations or groups that can understand and solve hard problems rapidly, achieve their goals, and adapt and increase their capacity over time. On the other hand, diminishers literally drain the intelligence, energy and capability from the employees or team members around them. They lead groups that operate in silos, find it hard to get things done, seem unable to do what’s needed to reach their goals. 

Multipliers break down into five disciplines in which they differentiate themselves from diminishers. The first is the Talent Magnet, who attracts and optimizes talent; the second is the Liberator, who creates intensity that requires an employee’s best thinking; next is the Challenger who extends challenges by having others do the hard lifting so that they can stretch themselves; next is the Debate Maker who facilitates a debate between his or her team which leads to a decision improving a process or issue; and finally is the Investor, who instills ownership and accountability with his/her employee base. Interestingly Wiseman believes that multipliers increase efficiency and productivity by two times. 

Diminishers also break down into five different prototypes. They are the Empire Builder, who is only interested in collecting very talented people around themselves so that they look good; next is the Tyrant, whose name is almost self-disclosing but ruins all those around them with their insistent criticisms; next is the Know-it-all who give directives simply to showcase how much they know limiting what their teams can achieve to what they themselves know how to do. This means the team must try to deduce, literally in the dark, the soundness of the decision instead of executing it; and finally, there is Micromanager, who generally believes they are only person who can figure something out and approach execution by maintaining ownership, jumping in and out of a project and reclaiming responsibility for problems which they have delegated. Diminishers usually reduce efficiencies by up to 50%. 

Wiseman presented several ways that a leader could use multiplier effects and I found many of them would work particularly well for the compliance practitioner who is working to operationalize a best practices compliance program. This is particularly true because it is through persuasion that compliance works best by getting other corporate disciplines to embrace compliance. 

Some of the specific multiplier techniques are to identify not only what the skills are for those on your team, but also what comes easily and natural to them. By doing so you can more effectively utilize their talents in implementing a compliance regime. Interestingly you can get employees to stretch through a technique called ‘supersizing’ where you give someone a task that may be “one size too big” for them, but allows them to grow into it. This is certainly applicable when working to operationalize compliance in business units outside the United States which may only have been dictated to previously but where not involving in doing compliance. 

As the CCO or compliance leader working to more fully operationalize your compliance program, you should work to limit your direct comments to a minimum going forward. This will allow the non-compliance team members to not only stretch themselves but also allows for more impactful intervention when necessary but the simple fact is you are intervening less. Louis Sapirman, the CCO at Dun & Bradstreet said that while he holds the office, he is not the face of compliance at the company. It is him employee base. He has literally multiplied the influence of the compliance function both inside and outside the company in this manner. 

Mistakes are going to happen in any implementation. The same is true when you are operationalizing your compliance program. To overcome this there are a couple of strategies. The first is to talk up your mistakes within the team for debriefing and analysis. The second is to actually make room for mistakes (think of a sandbox) where your team can experiment, take some risks and recover from the mistakes. 

I found her next point fascinating, which was to lead by asking questions. Every question is answered by another question. Her technique of leading with questions works with all five categories of multipliers. The reason it is so successful is that people are smart, the not only want to get things right but they want to build and eventually they will figure out how to do it. It is not simply a case of getting out of their way. It is about guiding them with your compliance expertise to come up with not only the right answer but a solution which will work. 

Now imagine applying this leadership technique as you are trying to more fully operationalize your compliance program. If you take this approach of leading by asking questions, you not only guidance the functional unit but you get greater buy-in to the entire concept and process as it becomes their process. The non-compliance team may design it and have ownership over it. 

Wiseman concluded by challenging each of us to multiply our influence to make those with work with and even work for better. You can use these skills to more fully operationalize your compliance program. If you do so, you will not only fulfill the requirements of the Department of Justice, laid out in the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs, you will bake compliance into the DNA of your company by making it a part of the way you conduct your business. 

Three Key Takeaways 

  1. Multipliers are leaders who encourage growth and creativity from their workers.
  2. Diminishers are those who hinder and otherwise keep their employees’ productivity at a minimum.
  3. Multiply the influence of the compliance function both inside and outside the company in this manner.

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 15, 2017

Welcome to Episode 5 of Compliance Man Goes Global podcast of FCPA Compliance Report International Edition. In this episode, we focus on typical concepts (or probably myths) of ways a Compliance professional might become a more valuable member of the management team rather than becoming most hated person in the organization.

Tom: To start with, Tim, probably we should explain to our listeners why we called our today’s episode ‘You Really Like Me’?

Tim Khasanov-Batirov:  We call today’s episode “You Really Like Me!” remembering Sally Field’s gushing acceptance speech at Oscar ceremony. The funny thing is that sometimes even in-house Compliance people have a strong wish to exclaim after her something like: “I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it—and I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!"      

Tom: OK, Tim, let’s see if this is possible in reality or would remain just a dream of Compliance officers globally.

Myth #1 There is a chance that Compliance officer could avoid being named the most hated person in the organization.  Tim, do you agree with this statement?

Tim Khasanov-Batirov: Let’s try. I think we have some pros here:  

Argument #1.

A Compliance professional can avoid being the most hated person if personnel along with top management understand the role of Compliance function in the organization. Unless a Compliance professional delivers a clear message about risks he or she manages and value they bring, they are dependent on subjective views of other team members. We have depicted this situation in the attached release of Compliance Man illustrated series.    

Argument #2.

You might think about setting KPIs based on respective regulatory requirements referring for instance to 10 Hallmarks of the Effective Compliance Program or the Evalution of Corporate Compliance Programs. This will allow you to set criteria, which could be used for unbiased and verifiable evaluation of your efforts.  

Tom:  I think, Tim that there are some cons here as well:

Argument #1

As we know, there is no way people will like a Compliance officer all the time. Subject to particular situation or position, the Compliance professional’s managers might change their minds. So we should not have illusion of being most loved person constantly.

  

Argument #2

There is a big risk if Compliance person becomes too friendly with the employees and becomes co-opted by the business folks. This could lead to losing impartiality. Therefore, there is a very thin line between being business-oriented ethics professional and attempts just to ‘get likes’ from management.   

Tim: Tom, I agree with you.

Tom: Let’s go, Tim. We can formulate the next concept or maybe misconception in the following way:

Myth #2. In real life, Compliance officer de-facto is not able to become a member of managerial team (or just “team” so to say) being isolated from it by virtue of his “business prevention” mission. Tim, will you agree with this concept?

Tim: I strongly disagree with this concept.

Argument #1.

In my view, Compliance department in many cases is called a “Business prevention unit” not because of being very strict and picky. It is because of not fully understanding the business processes involved. As soon as compliance officer starts to hear other team members, he will be able to suggest solutions, which are compliant, and business oriented in the same time.      

Argument #2.

It is about priorities. Management team should clearly see that Compliance officer is focusing on real regulatory risks and priorities rather than creating a useless bureaucracy regarding minor issues, which in many cases could be easily resolved.    

What are your views, Tom?

Tom: I have some pros to support the concept that in reality Compliance officer is not just another member of the business team.

Argument #1.

We have a special mission to assess business from external, in majority of cases regulatory prospective. Thus, many things, which at first glance might look as being good for business, could pose regulatory risk in the future. Thus, Compliance person is in charge of demonstrating a high-level or strategic view rather than solely looking at momentary business advantages.

Argument #2.

Compliance is a relatively new job in comparison to well established corporate functions such as  a  Legal Department or even Internal Audit. So even just by mere fact of being a “newcomer” the Compliance Officer differs from almost all members of the management team which represent “traditional” occupations.  

Tim: Agreed, Tom. As key takeaways from today discussion, I think we can mention the following:

  • Compliance officer should be a business-oriented person with good understanding of business processes along with clear views on how to structure them in line with regulatory expectations.
Nov 14, 2017

Many compliance professionals in the corporate world work long and hard to rise to the senior management level in their organizations. It takes subject matter expertise, hard work and sometime propitious good fortune to get to the C-Suite level in a large company. However, many of the skills which work to get you there do not always serve you in the context of a 360-degree view of communication at the senior management level. 

One thing many compliance practitioners have in common is self-reliance. Not every lawyer and compliance practitioner is a Type A driven personality but many are. In many ways, it is what makes us a success. However, in the corporate world, just like any other, there are limits to self-reliance. Put another way, if you do not have a culture where everybody appreciates the importance of their role in showing the type of behavior that is expected within your organization; then you are probably not doing a very good job of driving culture.  Adam Bryant explored this theme in a New York Times (NYT) Corner Office column where he interviewed Lori Dickerson Fouché, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Prudential Group Insurance. 

A key lesson is to ask for help. Fouché said it “stemmed from the fact that I had been used to thinking, “I can get through the brick wall. I can make this happen.” I was very self-reliant, and I figured that if I could do it, so could the team. So, I overworked some teams early on, and that led to an early lesson around asking for help. It’s O.K. not to have all the answers and not to be able to do everything and to put your hand up and say, “I need help.” I was so surprised by how people really wanted to help. They loved being invited into the process.” Building on the Wiseman concept of multipliers, you see how you can expand the influence only yourself and your corporate compliance function. 

From these experience, Fouché also learned to prioritize. She noted, “You simply can’t do everything. There were times I would walk into a new job, and my eyes would be huge and I would feel like a kid in a candy shop. I’d think, “Let’s just get after it,” instead of, “O.K., let’s pause. What’s the most important thing to really get after?” Being able to say “No” or “Not now” were important lessons for me.” 

Another interesting lesson concerns transparency. Fouché related “to share my thoughts so that other people could follow them. I learned an important lesson from a colleague when I was C.E.O. at another company, who said: “Lori, this is a little bit like being on the train and you’re in the front of the train and we’re in the dark. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But there are people who are toiling in the back, and they’re throwing coal in the engine, and they’re working the cars, and that’s all they know. You should be at the front of the train, but your job is to shorten the distance between you and the back of the train so that we can all see what you see at the front.”” 

In other words, prioritize and start the slogging work of going through the issues in front of you. It not only gives you some semblance of control but also helps you to focus on doing the next right thing. As a business leader, others in your team and cascading down will take their clues from you and begin to operate in the same analytical manner. This also ties into one of Fouché’s key points about her leadership style. 

Not only does she strive for personal transparency, she expects it from others. She said, “I expect my leaders to listen. I expect them to ask questions. I expect them to understand what’s going on. I am somewhat infamous for saying, “So how’s it going?” And they’ll say, “Great.” Then I’ll say, “How do you know?” It’s one thing when people start telling you anecdotes and it’s another thing when they can say, “Well, because we track this and we measure that.” We make sure we’re analytical in our approaches.” 

If you couple this with two characteristics Fouché looks for when hiring: resilience and perseverance; it gives you a hint on some key characteristics. This is because she believes that when “working in big companies, and you have to find a way to navigate and negotiate to an end result. It could be a winding path. Make sure that people feel like they know how to do that, and do it in a way that is respectful of the system.” You will have more success in communications and in use of social media if you first start with a relationship, particularly in getting to know the leaders in a given geographic market within your organization.

Aesop noted many eons ago that the race is not always won by the fastest but often the strongest and the steadiest. Many of the characteristics which allow you to rise within a corporation may need to be ameliorated somewhat at the C-Suite.  Fouché’s lessons around a 360-degree approach to both leadership and communications give you some good starting points.

Three Key Takeaways 

  1. Learn to ask for help.
  2. As a CCO share your thoughts so others can follow them.
  3. Leadership often involves taking employees on a winding path. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 14, 2017

In this episode, Matt Kelly and I take a deep dive into the Cardinal Health corporate governance imbroglio. In it, a disgruntled shareholder, the Teamsters Pension fund brought a motion to have the CEO stripped of his title as Chairman of the Board. Although the motion failed, the Teamsters prevailed as the company took the requested step and separated the position. This matter included complaints about GC/CCO pay where those roles were held by one person who received a sizeable bonus even though the company did not meet its financial goals.

We consider the joint role of a GC-CCO and the potential corporate governance issues involved when the roles are held by one person. Does this create an irreconcilable conflict? What are the different functions of the General Counsel and the Chief Compliance Officer and how should we interpret a bonus payment? Should it be for one role or both roles. How does a joint GC-CCO role impeded the work of each corporate function individually? Finally, we consider how shareholder activism may now impact not only corporate governance but also corporate structures in functions such as compliance. What does this mean for the compliance function and Chief Compliance Officers going forward. 

We also touch on the role of compliance in drug distribution companies which have been drug into the opioid crisis. Cardinal Health shipped drugs totaling up to 55 pills for every person in the state of West Virginia to one town in that state. What, if anything, should the compliance function do in such a situation?

This case makes a fascinating case study in corporate governance and much more. 

For more information, see Matt Kelly’s blog posts

Compliance Lessons in the Cardinal Governance Fight and

Teamsters Blast Cardinal Health Compliance Efforts

Does the merger of the GC-CCO role create an irreconcilable conflict in corporate functions?

Nov 13, 2017

In this episode, I am interviewed by Jonathan Armstrong, a partner at Cordery Compliance in London on the implications of the Paradise Papers and Saudi Arabian corruption crackdown for the compliance practitioner. 

What every international business person should absolutely remember that there is no country in the world which makes bribery and corruption legal by statute. That means if and when a government decides to clamp down on what may have been a long-standing accepted business practice, of which you have been an active participant, there is nowhere to hide and very few places to hide. Witness GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) in China in 2013 and 2014 where the Chinese subsidiary unit President returned to China to be criminally charged and convicted. He was summarily deported back to the UK where GSK almost as quickly summarily terminated him from his employment. Now we have the omens of a potentially equally seismic event, this time from Saudi Arabia.

For more information, see my blog post Saudi Arabia Has a Corruption Crackdown - What is Your Response?

Nov 13, 2017

The life of a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) can be intense and the one of the most powerful tools you have is persuasion. Jenny O’Brien, CCO at United Health Care, has talked about the techniques that a CCO can use to influence decision making in a company to do business in ethically and in compliance. She has called these techniques of persuasion “Seven Steps of Influence” and advocates a CCO employ them help influence decision-making within an organization. 

  1. Collaboration. As a CCO you need to know your company’s business. If you are new to an organization you must take time to learn the business. You should sit in on sales meetings and, when appropriate, you should go out on sales call. Channeling your inner Atticus Finch, you must walk in the shoes of the business leaders you are assisting. By doing so, you will not only understand the products and services that your company offers but also the challenges that your business development team faces out in the world.
  2. You must work constantly at active listening, which is listening, thinking and then speaking, and not just jump into the middle of a conversation, talk to people in a manner that will address their concerns. When you do speak, be prepared to make the case for the compliance proposition that you are trying to get across. As a CCO, strive to be relevant in every interaction you have with your peers in senior management. This sometimes it means speaking up at meetings or other forums but sometimes it means listening. Develop a rapport with your business team and this rapport can lead to trust building.
  3. Relationships. This is relationships between the compliance function and other corporate functions in an organization, through a CCO or compliance practitioner can bring influence to bear. It all begins with building trust with others within your organization. Invest time to find others in your organization with which you want to work and with those with whom you desire to build relationships. The key relationships that a CCO or compliance practitioner can develop are with the audit function, the legal department, Human Resources, IT and corporate communications.
  4. Humility. Humility is important because it empowers. It can empower others to expand the circle of influence and get others in a corporation to influence an ever-expanding circle on behalf of compliance. The CCO does not need center stage. Echoing the DOJ Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs requirement that compliance should be operationalized, business units should solve compliance issues, as compliance is just another business process. Through such influence you can get business unit resources to solve a compliance problem, you will hold down the costs of the compliance function. It is not about being right but about moving the compliance ball forward in the right direction.
  5. Negotiation. A compliance practitioner you need to learn the art of compromise. Negotiation is not about the dichotomy of winning and losing an argument or debate. A CCO should strive to redefine what a win might look like or what a win might consist of for a business unit employee. When faced with such a confrontation, try to determine what both sides wanted then give them something else in addition to what they thought they wanted. A CCO can be considered a mediator not just simply an enforcer or Dr. No from the Land of No.
  6. Triple 'C'. Keep calm, cool and collected because all company employees, up and down the chain, are watching the CCO. For this reason, a compliance practitioner should channel their inner Harry Dean Stanton and have a laconic face, at all times. The Triple C’s are important because organizations look to the CCO to solve complex issues with simple solutions. When faced with a compliance issue or an obstacle you should endeavor to keep everything on an even keel and never let them see you sweat.
  7. Credibility. The final of the seven pillars was that the CCO role needs to be adequately scoped and that the accountabilities need to be clearly defined. Put another way, what is your job scope as the CCO and what is the function of the compliance department? What is your accountability to decide the resolution to an issue? As a CCO, you must demonstrate your value as a non-revenue function. This may require you to get out of your office and put on a PR campaign for compliance. A CCO needs to guard their independence in job function and reporting. You must make clear that you will have independent reporting up to the Board or Audit Committee of the Board. 

Influencing and using persuasion is not a one-time activity. It is ongoing. If you consider it within the context of the 360-degree approach to communication, it means calibrating every which manner of influence and with all your stakeholders, both inside and outside your organization. Persuasion touches all forms of communications whether those are formal communications, informal communications, or simply accidental communications. It includes using all the right methods of communications to maximize the influence you can bring to bear. 

Three Key Takeaways 

  1. Persuasion is probably the key tool for any CCO.
  2. Persuasion touches all forms of communications.
  3. Influencing, using persuasion is not a one-time activity; t is ongoing as in literally all the time. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 10, 2017

What is the most famous line in Shakespeare about lawyers? That is an easy one because lawyer-haters across the world (and lawyer-lovers as well) know it - First thing we do is kill all the lawyers. It comes from Henry IV, Part II. Most lawyers understand that by killing all the lawyers, it will create an atmosphere that would allow for tyranny and anarchy. Unfortunately, this clear import is not as widely seen by civilians (i.e. non-lawyers). 

The debate about whether the compliance function should be located in a company’s legal department or in a separate compliance function has largely concluded that it should be independent because of the difference in the two discipline’s mandates; many in a corporate compliance function came from the General Counsel’s office or have legal training. The lack of law schools providing training in leadership skills has led to a paucity of such proficiencies in my legal brethren. 

I was intrigued by an article in MIT Sloan Management Review, entitled “Leading by the Numbers, by Byron Hanson, where he discussed the sometimes difficult transition which financial professionals have to make when moving to broader leadership roles. I found some of his insights to be useful to the lawyer moving from a corporate legal department or large law firm into a leadership role in a compliance department.  He listed five changes needed which I have adapted for lawyers. 

Transition 1 - From Expert to Leveraging Expertise 

Most lawyers feel they are experts in the law, which can be thought of as a technical expertise. Hanson quoted the experiences of Colin Pavlovich, who said, “When I came into a senior leadership role, in the first six months I had to get used to just letting go…that you’re not in a technical role day to day with a set agenda, that you’re a professional manager and need to step away from being the expert to [being] a leader in strategy development and execution.” The key is to recognize that “leadership does not mean a loss of expertise but rather an opportunity to leverage your…skills in a more valued way.” 

Transition 2 - From Apprenticeship to Coaching 

Many lawyers still learn in the old-fashioned apprenticeship model where you learn through working with and for more “senior professional, who provide a heavy degree of oversight of their subordinates’ work to ensure that mistakes are minimal.” That is certainly true at most large law firms. It is also true that many legal assignments are so large, they can become too complex or even too complicated for a junior lawyer to handle so there is fair degree of oversight involved by senior practitioners. 

Clearly this model can build up technical expertise but when a lawyer moves into a Chief Compliance Officer role, they take on a broader remit. Hanson wrote, “Delegating, trusting, and empowering are all part of a coaching framework” which must be used for lawyers to add value once they move into a CCO role. You can use your technical expertise to help guide but you will need to allow your compliance team to grow for you to become an effective leader. 

Transition 3 - From Reporter to Translator 

Every lawyer worth his or her salt can perform triage on a contract, an acquisition or you name the legal issue and report his or her findings from the legal perspective. However, as a leader in the compliance function, your analysis must change from simply reporting on the legal aspects to a mindset of prevent, detect and remediate compliance risks before they arise and after they have arisen. Chief executives rarely need a recitation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as a law; they want to know what the compliance risks are going forward. If the risk is moving into a higher category, can that risk be managed? Your ability as a CCO is to create meaning and simplicity around risk. 

Transition 4 - From the Right Answer to Multiple Possibilities 

Many lawyers tend to see one right answer for a complicated legal issue. Yet as a CCO you must “navigate complex problems that have multiple plausible answers.” In compliance, there will be a wide variety of factors that legal analysis will not consider. Hanson quoted Paul Sims for the following, “You’ve got to understand your environment and the context in which you’re presenting these numbers [legal analysis] and is that really the right answer? You need to unleash your thinking a bit.” Clearly as risk goes up the management of that risk will need to increase. As your risk management increases you will need to find ways of auditing or monitoring that risk which will aide you in making any adjusts you might need to go forward. 

Transition 5 - From Value Protector to Value Creator 

This one is probably the biggest challenge for lawyers, particularly those who move from an in-house corporate legal department to the CCO chair. The mandate of the legal department is to protect the company. The mandate of the compliance function is to prevent, detect and remediate. These are quite different. As Roy Snell has said, if lawyers could do compliance, we would not have needed to create a whole new profession. 

Yet moving to a CCO role also means seeing the world not simply through a legal lens but also through a business lens. For it is in the value created by compliance that will assure its success going forward. Lawyers must transition their thinking from conservative and risk-averse to how can we get something done in compliance. Moreover, most in-house lawyers have been assigned roles that are essentially legal risk mitigation and stewardship. If a CCO focuses too much on those areas, value creation opportunities will be missed going forward. 

The ability to think critically is still the gift that most US law schools bestow on their graduates. That ability can serve you well as an in-house lawyer and as a CCO. However, the mandates of the legal department and the compliance department are so different and in many ways divergent that the transition from one to the other is not always guaranteed to be smooth. 

Three Key Takeaways

  1. Many compliance professionals come out of the General Counsel’s office which has a different focus than the compliance department.
  2. Law schools do not prepare their students for the holistic requirements of compliance practitioner, only how to be a lawyer.
  3. Learn to read a spreadsheet. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet.  Dun & Bradstreet’s compliance solutions provide comprehensive due diligence reporting and analysis to reduce your risk of working with fraudulent companies by accessing a company’s beneficial ownership, reputation risk and more.  For more information, go to dnb.com/compliance.

Nov 10, 2017

The first 100 days. Franklin D Roosevelt’s first term is the standard by which all other Presidents are measured for their first days in office. Why? It is because not only did FDR hit the ground going full speed but also passed legislation, which changed the shape of America for years to come. While the first thing he did was declare a Bank Holiday to save the nation’s banking system, he also passed significant legislation to try to stem the effects of the Great Depression. These bills included the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and, finally, the National Industrial Recovery Act. He also enacted the Truth-in-Lending and Glass-Steagall Acts to help regulate the stock market, whose collapse had heralded the economic downturn. Even if these acts did not turn the tide of the Great Depression, it gave people hope because at least it appeared FDR was doing something to fight the economic calamity.

Now imagine that you finally have been able to secure a new position as Chief Compliance Officer in the compliance field. Every company believes that they are ethical and that they certainly do business ethically but what are some of the things that you can do in your first 100 days? Hopefully you will not be dropped into a corporate situation as dire as the one FDR faced for the US in 1933 but the reality is that many new heads are still judged on these mythical first 100 days.

The key is to try and make a clear transition. The best situation is if you can take some time off to prepare yourself between your old and new positions. You should try and use this time to learn more about your new employer and supplement the information you were able to garner during the hiring process. If you cannot take time off, the article suggests studying every night to prepare for your new position. If you want to hit the ground running, you must be ready to do so.

You will be required to learn quite a bit on the job, very, very quickly. Some key areas for immediate inquiry, which include your new company’s investigations and hotline issues; the internal audit documents relating to compliance; the annual reports for any notes about investigations or other Securities and Exchange Commission issues; and a general review to see what is happening the industry to see if there are ongoing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigations or recent enforcement actions. I would suggest meeting many of your new colleagues in the organization to interview them about the company’s existing compliance program. From these interviews, you can reach out to begin to build a network for further interviews.

You need to first identify the highest compliance risks and then try to focus on the risks which are not being managed effectively. A new CCO must work quickly to determine where the highest risks are and which of these risks will have the biggest effect on the business. The part that is more challenging as managing risk while focusing on the areas that have the biggest business value can be a tricky proposition. Business value can be measured in country value, profit or reputation. It can also be measured in reducing potential exposure in fines or prosecutions, or growing revenue and profits.

You do not need to try and fix the company’s entire compliance program in the first 100 days. But you do need to find a way to identify opportunities to build both personal credibility and credibility for the compliance function within the organization. You can take on an issue, which seems to have the highest profile within the company and work towards resolving it. Some of your work may come with instituting good process and may be as simple as focusing on adding value, removing obfuscation and helping to grow the business, rather than being Dr. No from the Land of No.

One obvious thing to generate success in the corporate world is to have a good relationship with your boss. You should have important conversations around expectations, working style, resources and your personal development. To facilitate these discussions the following points are posited:

  • There is no value in trashing the existing compliance program.
  • You need to drive the discussions with your boss.
  • Your boss is looking for solutions, not problems.
  • Your boss is not interested in running through your checklist of things to do.
  • Make sure that you connect with the people that your boss values and admires, such as their mentor.
  • Set expectations.

If you have not done so through the hiring process, you should have a clear understanding of what compliance means at your new company and what your role will be. While you were hired for FCPA or other anti-bribery legislation compliance, does compliance means something broader in your new role? Are there other areas for compliance intervention such export control, anti-money laundering, harassment, data protection or third party risks?

You will probably be called on to make some difficult personnel decisions in this area but one that is necessary. Your ability to select the right people for the right positions is among the most important drivers of success during your transition and beyond. You also need to hold onto the right people. The focus for every solid manager is to concentrate on the best people and only those people – the rest should quickly be managed up or out. If compliance is seen as ‘The Land of No’ populated by one or more Dr. No characters, it is time to make a change and the sooner the better.

One of the biggest keys for any successful compliance program is the ability to influence people outside your direct line of control. Supportive alliances, with all compliance stakeholders, are necessary if you are to achieve your goals. You will need to try and identify those persons and develop relationships, then create coalitions with them. This means you will need to get out of the office and get overseas as quickly as possible. While your manager, be it the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or other, will probably want you in the office, you need to get out of your office and build relationships in the field.

These first 100 days will be a time of very high stress. This may well be compounded by your travel schedule and working very long hours to try and fulfill the concepts. The right advice-and-counsel network is an indispensable resource. Use your outside network of mentors, coaches and friends which you have developed over the years, to discuss your part at the company and what you have been experiencing. The key is to use whatever resources are available to you during your first 100 days.

Just as FDR accelerated his actions during his first 100 days, a large part of his success was that he accelerated those around him. You should take this key component of FDR’s success to heart in your new role. Get your direct reports, bosses, and peers to accelerate their own transitions. The fact that you are in transition means they are too. The quicker you can get your new direct reports up to speed, the more you will help your own performance.

It is difficult to imagine today a harder situation than the country faced when FDR came to power in 1933. The task must have seemed overwhelming. Starting a new compliance leadership position at a new company can seem equally daunting. You need to not only think through your steps going forward but also how to execute them for maximum performance in this early part of your corporate career.

Nov 10, 2017

Jay and I return for a wide-ranging discussion on some of the top compliance and ethics related stories of the week, including:

  1. Justice Department announces 4 guilty pleas and one indict as follow on prosecutions from the Rolls Royce corruption case. See Tom’s article in the FCPA Compliance Report. See Sam Rubenfeld’s article in WSJ Risk and Compliance Report.
  2. Dick Cassin asks if the SEC is targeting foreign companies for FCPA enforcement. See article by Dick Cassin in the FCPA Blog.
  3. Hui Chen suggests there should be more FCPA enforcement of US domestic companies, reviews monitorships and the FCPA Pilot Program. Henry Cutter interviews Chen in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Report.
  4. Saudi Arabia has a corruption crackdown. What does it mean for the compliance practitioner? See Tom’s article in FCPA Compliance Report.
  5. What happens if your General Counsel is also your CCO? Joe Murphy explores this conundrum in the SCCE Blog.
  6. What will become of the DOJ’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs? Matt Kelly explores in Radical Compliance.
  7. What do the Paradise Papers mean for the compliance practitioner. Sam Rubenfeld considers in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Journal.
  8. Mike Volkov has a two-part series on the intersection of COSO and compliance. Part I on the framework; Part II on using the framework to break down siloes.
  9. AML concerns. Adam Davidson returns to the Compliance Report-International Edition podcast to explain the intersection of money-laundering and the Trump business empire. DAG Rod Rosenstein discusses the intersection of FCPA, AML prosecutions and international investigations in a speech to Clearing House 2017 Annual Conference.
  10. Join Tom’s monthly podcast series on One Month to a More Effective Compliance Program. In November, I consider how a 360-degree view of communications can enhance your compliance program. This month’s sponsor is the Dun & Bradstreet. It is available on the FCPA Compliance Report, iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube and JDSupra.
  11. FCPA Master Class Training in NYC on November 28 & 29. For information and registration, go here.
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