The Ultimate Guide to Making Yourself Relevant

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The Ultimate Guide to Making Yourself Relevant

Relevance has become a compliance obsession. If compliance were the fashion industry, then relevance would be the new black. There’s a good reason for this. If compliance isn’t relevant to the employees, it becomes a nuisance. Instead of taking its place as a business enabler, it becomes background noise or a source of friction and irritation. But seeking relevance is quite different from achieving it. What can we do to assure that we’re as relevant as possible to our audience?

Novelist Thomas Berger said, “The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” Relevance is achieved through answering the question, “How does whatever it is I want you to do apply in your day-to-day life?”

The Conundrum

Most of us know that we need to talk to the business, but relatively few understand the questions to ask to elicit the information we actually need. The biggest challenge faced by subject matter experts is the assumption that other people know what we’re talking about and can understand why we’re asking the questions we’re asking. Imagine your life before compliance. If someone called you and said, “What interaction does our business have with the instrumentalities of foreign governments?” You’d probably have hung up the phone. We in compliance need to know the answer to this question, but we must ask it in a way that elicits the information we need, instead of scaring and confusing the person talking to us.

The Questions

When it comes down to it, you need to frame the question for the business so that the person can easily give you the information you need. You need to use clear and comprehensible language. Here are some example questions for the most common types of risk areas managed by compliance. Adapt them to your business…

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Five Ways for Compliance to Deal with the Rise in Employee Activism and Politics at Work

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Five Ways for Compliance to Deal with the Rise in Employee Activism and Politics at Work

In less than two weeks, sixteen US states will vote in the primaries to nominate the candidate that will represent their party in the November election. Brexit has officially begun, although it is likely to take years to actually finish. And “cancel culture” is in full effect, with employees and consumers boycotting brands they believe to be acting unethically or in contravention of their personal beliefs. As politics heat up, some people inevitably bring their feelings publicly to work. This can cause incivility, bullying, the outcasting of individuals, retaliation, an uncomfortable work environment, and a host of allegations of violations of the Code of Conduct.

The uprise in political statements at work and personal activism isn’t imagined - its acceptance in the workplace is relatively new. Why has this trend begun, and more importantly, as compliance professionals, what specific actions can we take to ensure a workplace culture that adheres to the company’s values and is a comfortable workplace for everyone to be? Let’s find out.

The Stats: People Feel Empowered to Act Against their Company

Beginning about 2012, the “bring your whole self to work” movement began to pick up steam. The idea was simple: we shouldn’t compartmentalize ourselves into a “work version” that constrains who we are as a total human being. In 2018, there was a book written about how vulnerability and expression of pain and joy lead to creativity. The movement has empowered people to speak up about their concerns, which can be very positive for the speak-up culture the compliance team wishes to nurture when it comes to unethical conduct. Unfortunately, some people interpret this movement as a license to engage in incendiary conversation and rude behavior.

A study done by Weber Shandwick found that the majority of US employees believe they have the right to speak up at work about issues that impact society. In fact, nearly 40% of US workers said they have raised their voices to support or criticize their employers’ actions regarding a controversial issue affecting society. Fully 82% of millennials believe they have a right to speak up against their employer. One of the troubles with this is that not everyone will agree with what is “right” to speak out about.

The internet and competing news channels have given rise to the normalization of name-calling and the polarizing of society around political identity. When people bring this to work, the culture can sour quickly. Here’s what Compliance can do about it.

No. 1: Be Aware of what You Can and Can’t Do Legally…

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The Critical Question You AREN’T Asking (Yet)

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The Critical Question You AREN’T Asking (Yet)

People always ask, “Why did I fail?” It’s easy to wallow, saying “I don’t know why it didn’t work. Why was the project unsuccessful? Was it me? Why wasn’t I persuasive?” We’ve all asked ourselves these questions. It’s easy to ask yourself what went wrong.

Most of us fixate on the negative and don’t spend nearly enough time on the evaluation of the positive. While asking, “what went wrong” is important, it is equally or even more important to ask, “Why did I succeed?”

Alan Weiss is the author of over 60 books on sales and success. He tells readers to ask why did I succeed as often as they ask why did I fail? Weiss believes that most people celebrate when something goes well without contemplating why it went well. He posits that most people dissect interactions only when they go badly.

Why does it matter if you find out why you’ve succeeded? Because it enables you to duplicate the behavior, creating more success. How can you use the success question to its greatest potential? Why not try the following?

Request Formal Feedback…

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Five Lessons for Compliance Officers from the Biggest FCPA Settlement Ever

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Five Lessons for Compliance Officers from the Biggest FCPA Settlement Ever

Last week Airbus settled its multi-year bribery investigation for $4 billion dollars.  That’s billion with a “b”.  This settlement is extraordinary, as was the cooperation between the US, French and UK authorities.  What can we, as compliance officers, learn from this case?  And how can we apply it to our programs to make them stronger? Here are five lessons we can learn from the Airbus case to help us to build a better program. 

Lesson 1: Third-Party Risk Continues to Trump Everything Else

The Airbus case reinforces what we already know: third-parties are the main conduit for bribes.  It is estimated the 90% of FCPA cases involve third-parties.[i]  In the Airbus case, numerous third-parties were used as conduits.  We have the usual suspects: “consultants” that were used to funnel money to obtain an improper business advantage, as well as “business partners” that were used to move money to government officials.

Airbus’ case is interesting in that the company created a whole separate department to pay bribes.  According to prosecutors, Airbus created the “Strategy and Marketing Organization” to arrange the illicit payments.  It used an elaborate string of shell companies to conceal the funds funneled to intermediaries, according to the allegations. The “business partners” engaged by the Strategy and Marketing Organization allegedly promised airline officials luxury trips and apartments.

Third-Party risk must be at the top of any compliance officer’s agenda.  To manage the risks these third-parties, Compliance Officers should…

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