“When … management doesn’t model values, ethics becomes theoretical. Trust erodes. And once trust is gone, compliance can easily follow.”
One of the many companies I’ve worked with over the years experienced a big, public, regulatory violation. And it was amazing to observe how fast the company culture collapsed under that pressure.
A once strongly ethical and values-driven organization quickly transformed into a place of distrust and mistreatment, where the sole focus was on proving the issue had been addressed. Guided by a big name consulting firm, they chose to do so through an intense focus on documentation and a huge risk and compliance department. That is, they centered their solution on the tactical rather than the cultural.
I probably don’t have to tell you that huge regulatory bombshells don’t drop out of the sky, completely unexpected, with no inkling that they’re coming. You’ll never convince me that people on the front lines of this organization did not know that this thing was happening or that they didn’t try to speak up about it well in advance of the “discovery”. What likely happened was that they were silenced through coercion at multiple levels of the organization, both direct and indirect.
Accordingly, the right solution to this problem was not more documentation, a bright and shiny “compliance hot line”, a new Chief of Risk and Compliance, or a huge staff of compliance analysts. It was, of course, addressing the cultural issues that allowed the violation to be introduced in the first place and then to go on for years even though the “little people” were keenly aware of it.
And this is why your standard risk and compliance plan will fail every time. Because it creates the illusion of compliance, not actual compliance. It ignores the huge elephant in the room — that it doesn’t matter even a little bit what your compliance process is if it’s not backed by strong ethical leadership.
This organization actually had a strong ethical thread running through it’s policies and practices at one time. But then the pressure of the violation created a void into which the ethical culture collapsed. And it was replaced with one that cared a lot less about doing the right thing and lot more about short term gain.
If you want to do the right thing at work even while the pressure to do the opposite continues to mount, I want to work with you. We might start with “Leading with Moral Authority,” which is a fun, lively, and interactive introduction to grassroots, “real-world” business ethics. It’s a great lunch and learn, retreat activity, or team workshop. Contact me to learn more.
Inspiration article: https://lnkd.in/g3-k7XMM
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