King Arthur Week, King Arthur and Leadership – Part I

I have been studying the legend of King Arthur and thought it would be good idea to have a week of blog posts around the legend of King Arthur, the Roundtable and his knights. Today I begin with King Arthur and some leadership lessons that might apply to a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), compliance practitioner or others who might be responsible for an anti-corruption compliance program based on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), UK Bribery Act or similar anti-bribery law.

According to the legends, King Arthur achieved quite a bit in one lifetime. He, established a kingdom, ruled his castle, Camelot and brought peace and order to the land based on law, justice, and morality. He founded an order known as the Knights of the Round Table where in all knights are seated as equals around the table, symbolizing equality, unity, and oneness. Nicole Lastimado, in a blog post entitled “Characteristics of a Good Leader 🙂”, identified five characteristics that she believed made Arthur a good leader.

Adapting Lastimado King Arthur was (1) Honest, in that he displayed sincerity, integrity, and candor in his actions. (2) Intelligent, because he read and studied. (3) Courageous, because he had the perseverance to accomplish a goal, regardless of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles. (4) Imaginative because he adapted by making timely and appropriate changes in his thinking, plans, and methods. Finally, (5) Inspiring, because through demonstrating confidence, he inspired his knights and those in his Kingdom to reach for new heights. I would add as a separate category that Arthur led from the front.

I thought about those qualities when I read a couple of recent articles in the Houston Chronicle. The first was by the Chronicle Business Columnist, L. M. Sixel, entitled “Leaders possess the keys to safety”, and the second was an Op-Ed entitled “Trust Shaken”. Both articles discussed corporate issues that have led to catastrophic injuries or even deaths and more importantly how the entities involved reacted. The first article discussed safety at the workplace and the second health issues in the processing of food products.

In her article Sixel, wrote, “A company truly interesting in making sure its workers are safe has to come up with ways to make it easy and risk-free to bring up potential safety problems.” Moreover, the corporate attitude which fosters this “starts with leadership.” She cited to Frank Reiner, the president of the Chlorine Institute, who recently said in a speech to the group’s annual conference in Houston “You have to eliminate the fear.” Additionally, “Once the cause is identified, similar accidents can be prevented, he said. The message that people are free to come forward to talk about what went wrong and why has to come from the top down. Identifying problems not only is everyone’s responsibility but also a companywide expectation.”

Equally important is for a company to learn from its mistakes. Obviously there should be a root cause analysis after a disaster. At the same conference, the Keynote Speaker, John E. Michel, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and author of The Art of Positive Leadership: Becoming a Person Worth Following, said “After a disaster, there is a big investigation to find out why it happened and fix the problem before it can happen again. Sometimes, whole fleets are grounded after an airline crash.” However Michel noted that it is important to keep learning even if there is no disaster. Michel “likes to pay attention to “near misses” and learn from the times things could have gone horribly wrong but didn’t” and that “There are debriefing sessions even when things go well on a flight mission and there are always tweaks to be made.”

Another speaker at the conference Mark Briggs, area director of the Houston South office for OSHA, noted it was important for employees to feel their suggestions and comments around safety are considered by management, saying “You have to show you care and that’s its not just a one-month project.” If management shows that it takes employee recommendations around safety seriously, it will help employees down the chain feel more secure about bringing them to management’s attention.

The Chronicle Op-Ed piece focused on one of the most beloved institutions in the great state of Texas – Blue Bell Ice Cream. Unfortunately for Blue Bell, in March there were five cases of listeria in Kansas, linked to a Blue Bell plant. Three of those persons died, “although a Kansas health official stated that the listeriosis was not the cause of death.” The Chronicle piece noted that after that initial discovery, “multiple strains of listeria have been found in its Brenham and Oklahoma plants, almost 500 miles apart, according to the CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention]. Possible explanations include lax safety standards, extremely bad luck striking twice or some undisclosed manufacturing issue.”

A The Texas Tribune article by Terri Langford, entitled “State Health Tests Prodded Blue Bell Recall”, said, “The crisis for Blue Bell began on March 13, when Kansas officials determined that Listeria-tainted portions of the company’s ice cream made it into products served to five hospital patients between January 2014 and January 2015. Of the five who became ill, three died. By March 24, Kansas officials traced the source of the listeria to Blue Bell’s plant in Broken Arrow, Okla., built by the Texas company in 1992. On April 3, the Centers for Disease Control had traced Blue Bell’s Listeria strain to six other patients going back to 2010. Four had been hospitalized in Texas for unrelated problems when they became sick from listeria. Five days later, on April 8, the CDC had identified two clusters of Blue Bell listeria victims. The strains were traced to the plants in Oklahoma and Texas.”

Yet it was not until Blue Bell was notified by a representative from the Texas Department of State Health Services, that “lab tests on two Blue Bell ice cream flavors — Mint Chocolate Chip and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough — came back “presumptive positive” for the deadly bacteria Listeria monocytogenes” that the company announced it was pulling product from its shelves for testing.

What are the lessons from for the CCO or compliance practitioner? You should channel your inner King Arthur and lead. You have to lead management to understand that one of the best sources of information on your own business is your employees. There is a reason the FCPA Guidance lists internal reporting as one of the Ten Hallmarks of an Effective Compliance Program. You must give employees a way to report misconduct and then you must use that information to investigate and communicate to employees going forward. If there are lessons to be learned use those lessons for in-house compliance training. If a true catastrophe or disaster befalls the company, do not wait to remediate. Do so as soon as is practicable, not when the government calls.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2015

Gulliver’s Travels, Truth or Fiction?

There was once a man named Gulliver who traveled widely and wrote a book about his adventures called Gulliver’s Tales. During his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and finds himself a prisoner of a race of little people, who live in the country of Lilliput. After giving assurances of his good behavior, Gulliver becomes a resident in Lilliput and becomes a favorite of the court. From there, the book follows Gulliver’s observations on the Court of Lilliput. He is also given the permission to roam around the city on a condition that he must not harm their subjects and otherwise engage in illegal, immoral or unethical conduct.

I am continually amazed at how life imitates art because if I told you the following tale you might accuse me of simply making up things to write about. Imagine there is a corporate banking Chief Executive Officer (CEO), whose company signed one of the largest Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPA) ever a little over two years ago giving assurances of good behavior going forward. Now imagine I tell you that the same CEO has been hiding money for years in a Swiss bank account through a shell corporation for ‘his privacy’ (IE., Hiding money from the Lilliputians of this world). Unfortunately for the real Stuart Gulliver, the CEO at the banking giant HSBC, these facts are true. While his company is in yet another scandal involving its illegal conduct, while under a DPA for its past sins, it turns out the CEO was hiding approximately $7.7MM in a Swiss bank account. To compound this effort to conceal his monies, he did so through a shell Panamanian company.

Yet, just like the fictional Gulliver, the real Gulliver has a very simply explanation for this practice. According to Jenny Anderson, in an article in the New York Times (NYT) entitled “HSBC Chief Defends Swiss Bank Account Worth $7.7 Million”, Gulliver said “This has an everyday explanation to it” and said the explanation was that he was trying to hide the money so his co-workers would not know he much money he made. Or as Anderson wrote, “In an effort to protect his privacy — he was the bank’s top earner — he put the money in Switzerland to hide it from the prying eyes of his Hong Kong colleagues. But he then had to hide it from his curious Swiss colleagues, so he created an anonymous Panamanian company.”

So it turns out that Gulliver was not only trying to hide his money from his co-workers but also from the Swiss by creating a shell corporation to launder the money into before depositing it in Switzerland. Similar to those pesky Lilliputians, who might want to find out something about him that he did not want them to know, as when the fictional Gulliver agreed to not violate the law or engage in otherwise unethical conduct. Of course the real Gulliver has protested that such arrangements were not illegal at the time he engaged in them, side-stepping the question of whether his conduct was unethical (Ethical bankers, does that topic belong in the fiction section?).

Gulliver also went on a charm offensive essentially claiming that not only him but the entire banking industry in general was being picked on. Channeling his inner Mother Theresa, Gulliver was quoted in an article in the Financial Times (FT), entitled “Standards for bankers higher than for bishops, claims HSBC chief Gulliver” by Martin Arnold and George Parker, as saying “It seems to me that we are holding large corporations to higher standards than the military, the church or civil service.” While I am not quite certain as to the pay scale of UK church leaders, I am relatively certain that those in the civil service and military do not have an extra $7.7MM laying around that they need to launder through a Panamanian corporation to hide in a Swiss bank account.

The real Gulliver should have just channeled his fictional Gulliver and said that when in the land of Lilliput, you do not have to tell the Lilliputians the truth, even if you have sworn in a pesky DPA to do so. From the real Gulliver’s statement about bankers being held to higher standards, he obviously thinks that the church, military and civil service (and probably the rest of us mere mortals) have Lilliputian ethical obligations compared to him.

What does all this mean for prosecuting HSBC in the newly erupted money laundering through its Swiss subsidiary scandal? Well it is great to know your CEO has first hand knowledge of the mechanics of such activities. The appropriate UK authorities or even the US Department of Justice (DOJ) could interview the real Gulliver as a subject matter expert (SME) on not only how to hide money from your fellow employees, but also from the Swiss and even gain insight into such machinations to hide money from your own national tax authorities. The real Gulliver may be a real find for the DOJ as an expert witness, at the trial of his company for breach its DPA.

Further, just think of the credibility the real Gulliver would have in negotiations with the DOJ on whether HSBC broke its promises to do business in compliance with US anti-money laundering (AML) laws when it signed its DPA back in 2012. He could go right into the meeting and say, “Lads, let me dispel any misconceptions you might have about Swiss bank accounts. They exist to hide money. At least that is how I use them personally.” He could then walk the lowly civil servants who work in the DOJ Fraud Section and who have lower standards than the whiter-than-white bankers through how the real world of money laundering works, or at least the real world of multi-millionaires who, for some reason, want to protect their own privacy.

The real Gulliver could answer yet another rhetorical question that he posed, and was reported in the FT article, when he asked, “Can I know what every one of 257,000 people is doing? Clearly, I can’t. If you want to ask the question could it ever happen again – that is not reasonable.” The real Gulliver could then go on to respond to this rhetorical flourish along the lines of the following, But I can tell you what is reasonable, to ask me if I know what I am doing and how I am doing it. I am hiding money in my Swiss bank account through a shell Panamanian company. He might even add, How brilliant is that?

Since the fictional Gulliver lived and traveled over 300 years ago, he may be distantly related to the real Gulliver of HSBC today. Nevertheless for a bank CEO to have laundered his own money through a shell corporation into a Swiss bank account ‘for privacy’ is one of those convergences where truth surely is stranger than fiction.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2015

The Eve of Destruction and Tone at the Top – You Are Who Say You Are

In 1965 the single Eve of Destruction was released. It was written by an 18 year old named Phil Sloan and was sung by former member of the New Christie Minstrels named Barry McGuire. To top it off, it was produced by Lou Adler. These facts, the story of the song, its recording and release were related in a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article by Steve Dougherty entitled “Still on the ‘Eve of Destruction’”. There are some singles that got under my skin when they were released and have remained there. This song was one of them. For me, the single most powerful line in the song was following:

Think of all the hate there is in Red China; And take a look around to Selma Alabama. 

Even as an eight year old I pondered the import that line. While we were taught that the Soviet Union might have wanted to defeat, conquer, and then enslave us; it was Red China that hated us so much they wanted to wipe us out of existence As we were taught back then that it was the Red Chinese who hated us; I wondered if there was that much hate in Selma Alabama. For if there was as much hate in Selma Alabama as there was in Red China, it had to be quite a lot of it.

I thought about Eve of Destruction and those lyrics about the hate in Selma, Alabama when I read about the conduct of a couple of senior managers recently. While they have both apologized for their conduct and comments that were clearly beyond the pale, I wondered that if you do say and act a certain way, if it really translates into who you really are. For the compliance practitioner, I wondered what such comments or actions might mean about a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or other senior management’s commitment to doing business in an ethical manner and in compliance with anti-corruption laws such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or UK Bribery Act.

The first has been nicknamed Nut-Rage and involved the (now former) Korean Air executive Cho Hyun-ah (Heather Cho), who threw one of the greatest diva-worthy (or perhaps five year-old worthy) public temper tantrums of all-time. An article in the BBC Online, entitled “Former Korean Air executive apologises for ‘nut rage‘” ,reported that “Ms Cho was onboard a Korean Airlines plane departing from New York for Incheon last week when she demanded a crew member to be removed, after she was served nuts in a bag, instead of on a plate.” Also according an article in Slate, entitled “Flight Attendant Forced to Kneel for Serving Nuts in a Bag (Instead of a Dish) to Korean Air Executive” by Daniel Politi, Ms. Cho was not simply content to disrupt the plane’s service, air traffic control and airport scheduling, he wrote “Just when you thought the whole story about the Korean Air executive who went nuts over some nuts couldn’t get more ridiculous, the head of the cabin crew said he was forced to kneel to apologize about how a flight attendant served some macadamia nuts. Just in case you haven’t been following the case, Heather Cho, the daughter of the airline’s chairman and the executive in charge of in-flight service, forced a plane to return back to the gate at New York’s JFK airport last week after a flight attendant dared to bring her macadamia nuts in a bag and not a dish. Cho forced the head of the cabin crew to get off the plane.”

But the story did not end there. In another BBC article, entitled “Korean Air executive ‘made steward kneel over nut rage”, the head of the cabin crew also reported that “Once home, officials from the airline came to his home to ask him to say that Ms Cho did not use abusive language and that he had voluntarily got off the plane.” Not to be outdone in this attempt to obstruct the truth and intimidate the witness, the BBC article also reported “Korean Air initially defended Ms Cho, noting that she was responsible for overseeing flight service in her role as vice-president, but the company later apologised.”

Unfortunately the second event is much closer to home here in the US and involves the Sony hacking scandal, which has been an unmitigated disaster for the company. In addition to all of the salary information, personal social security numbers and corporate intellectual properties that have been released, Sony’s Entertainment Chairman Amy Pascal sent some emails that can only at best be characterized as racially insensitive in nature. Jason L. Riley, in a WSJ entitled article “What Do You Call A Black President”, wrote that Pascal and Producer Scott Rudin engaged in the following email colloquy “Last year, Ms. Pascal and Mr. Rudin were invited to a fundraiser for Mr. Obama by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a DreamWorks Animation bigwig and major Democratic donor. Before the event, Ms. Pascal and Mr. Rubin joked about having to attend and what to say to the president. “What should I ask the president at this stupid Jeffrey breakfast,” wrote Ms. Pascal. “Should I ask him if he liked Django”, a 2012 film about slavery. Mr. Rudin responds with his own suggestion, “12 Years a Slave.” The two go back and forth naming movies they imagine the president enjoying—“The Butler,” “Think Like a Man,” “Ride Along”—all of which feature black actors or racial themes.” While Riley opines that this ­tete-a-tete is political in nature, my Southern upbringing reminds me of the line from Eve of Destruction to Think of all the hate there is in Red China; And take a look around to Selma Alabama. Maybe if McGuire were singing the song today, he would expand his geographic horizons.

While both Ms. Cho and Ms. Pascal have apologized for their actions and as noted, Korean Airlines has terminated Ms. Cho from her position. If you are what you say and show to others; what does all that mean when such people get into senior management positions? What does it say about Korean Airlines that it (1) fostered such a culture where the daughter of the President is given a job she clearly knows nothing about, (2) the same person humiliates an employee in public, (3) the Company tries to cover-up the incident by intimidating the employee, and (4) defends the actions of the daughter? Think that company has a culture of compliance? How about if a compliance incident is reported – would the company try to cover it up or thoroughly investigate it? Would the company try to intimidate witnesses to get them to change their recollections of events? How would you answer these questions if the incident in question were not over some nuts being served but over a safety issue?

As to Sony, how do you imagine minority employees might feel, given Pascal’s comments about the President of the United States? What about employees that might complain about discrimination in employment practices? If the head of the studio communicates in the manner about the President, what can a regular employee expect; similar sensitivity? Maybe the lesson for Sony and Pascal is simpler and much more direct, Don’t put stupid stuff in email. For even if your company is not hacked like Sony; in today’s world such emails uncovered in the context of a FCPA investigation might indicate a tone at the top which is not something you wish a regulator to see. But at the end of the day, you are you claim you are.

For a YouTube video clip of Barry McGuire singing Eve of Destruction, click here.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

King Arthur’s Roundtable – The CCO as Chief Collaboration Officer

Many commentators such as Donna Boehme and Mike Volkov often talk about what is required for the position of Chief Compliance Officer (CCO), both in terms of corporate support and skills as a leader of a company’s compliance function. But in many ways a CCO can be seen as a collaborator because so much of the job is working with and interfacing with various functions within a business. I thought about that concept when I read an article in the Corner Office section of the New York Times (NYT) entitled “Titles Don’t Matter. Teamwork Does.” by Adam Bryant where he interviewed and profiled Girish Navani, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of eClinincalWorks, a provider of clinical information systems.

I found Navani’s leadership style focusing on collaboration to be a good model for a CCO or compliance practitioner because what the compliance function needs to bring is a partnership to help the business and other units do business in compliance with the relevant legal and regulatory scheme. In the world of anti-bribery and anti-corruption that means compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), UK Bribery Act and similar laws. Navani said that his leadership style is to be as open as possible. One of the techniques that he uses is to have an oval table for meetings. No doubt channeling his inner King Arthur (or perhaps Richard Harris playing King Arthur), the configuration of the table actually seems to facilitate conversation and learning.

Another interesting insight was that Navani structures his company around teams. I thought this could be something that the compliance function could use in its dealings with business units because compliance is really a partnership with the business units and compliance spans multiple functions within any company. I also found another leadership insight from Navani’s leadership style. Navani said he continues “to learn every day. Leadership to me is many different qualities. Some are very basic. You’ve go to be approachable, humble and hard-working. Then there are ones regarding how you treat people. I listen more now. Before, I’d speak all the time. I will still do a lot of talking in meetings, but I absorb others opinions more. And I’m completely open to being told “no”. Questioning my own decision-making with others in the room is fine.”

I found that last point quite useful to consider. Coming out of the legal department and into compliance, I did not always take kindly to being told ‘no’ by someone from the business unit. I thought every pushback was some type of pressure test looking for weakness or tension. However, Navani’s style brings up the useful reminder that often the business function can assist compliance in learning how to perform the function more quickly or more efficiently. Certainly the business can assist the compliance function in understanding the highest risks that a company should focus on managing. In such a partnership role, compliance and the business unit can compliment each other to stop wasting time on immaterial risks so that resources can be delivered to the company’s highest risks.

Navani also stressed accountability. At his company “You’ve got to be accountable to yourself first, and you’ve got to be accountable to your team.” This certainly has application to the compliance function as well. One of the battles that compliance can fight is to be ‘The Land of No’ and the CCO is the head of it, or ‘Dr. No’. However by stressing accountability and creating transparency in the compliance process, I believe that a CCO can go a long way towards ameliorating that misperception.

I also found Navani’s techniques for hiring instructive for compliance. He said, “I look for the heart first. I don’t ask for direct experience.” He expects a modicum of professional expertise by the questions he asks most often are “Do you want to win? What drives you every day? Why health care IT? Can you spend 10 years of your career here? What do you want to do in those 10 years?” Navani went on to say that if he received satisfactory responses to those queries the technical aspects of a position can be taught. But he strives to see if a candidate’s heart is in the right place.

In addition to using these questions to ferret out candidates who will not work with his company, Navani uses these questions to set both a tone and expectation. The message he sends is “We’re not going to stifle you. If you can think out of the box, you will.” Navani believes that by hiring such employees they have the opportunity to become game changers at his company. Now imagine if you could have your Human Resource function use the hiring process to ask questions around attitudes around business ethics or other compliance issues. It would have the dual effect of allowing your company to have a front line inquiry that might weed out those who might be prone to cutting corners through bribery and corruption. But equally important would be the expectation set on the high value your company has on compliance and business ethics. The message would begin pre-hire, set again during employee orientation training and continued throughout the employment tenure.

Through migrating some of these leadership techniques that Navani espoused into your compliance tool-kit; a CCO or compliance professional can help to shift a company’s conversation around compliance. You can move from simply being seen as a safety backstop to one of developing and implementing solutions. Some of the other insights that I drew from Navani include setting out your core function of compliance. A compliance function should be able to offer expertise and insight into solutions. One part of that may be delivering data and other information to the business function to help them make better economic decisions for the company. But another way might be through compliance coaching advocacy.

Navani’s leadership once again demonstrates that if your compliance function shows integrity and responsibility, it can lead to greater teamwork between departments. Many business units fear that the compliance function will take away control of the business process from them. However by demonstrating that compliance is really in partnership, this can move a long way to alleviating this concern.

And do not forget the Round Table.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

Mickey Rooney and The 90 Cent Solution

We begin today with a word on the death of Mickey Rooney. Rooney’s career, spanning nearly 90 years was certainly was from a different era. He was short of stature and long in his number of marriages but as Bob Lefsetz noted in his blog post tribute to Rooney, “But they stood in front of us twenty feet tall. At the drive-in. Even when the pictures truly got small on the tiny old screens of yore they emerged triumphant, because they were so good-looking, so charismatic. And if you were big enough, a bright enough star, your legacy lived on, even if your present day circumstances bore no resemblance to fame.” But here’s why there is always a place in my heart for Mickey Rooney. When I was very young I lived with my grandparents and one night I watched the 1935 movie version of Shakespeare’s A Mid Summer Night’s Dream on television with my grandmother. Rooney’s so over the top performance of Puck began for me a life long love affair with the Bard. So here’s to the grandmother that started me off on a lifelong love affair of Shakespeare’s works and here’s to the Mickster—you did it your way.

I have often considered the role of senior management is to set a proper ‘Tone-At-The-Top” to do business ethically and in compliance with anti-corruption laws like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or the UK Bribery Act. Incentives to do business ethically and in compliance are also recognized as an important part of any best practices compliance program. The flip side of incentives is disincentives, such as discipline or financial penalties for affirmatively engaging in misconduct. But how far should such disincentives go and how strong should they be? Should there be penalties for not only affirmatively engaging in misconduct but also failing to monitor risk-taking that allows misconduct to occur? If the latter becomes prevalent, how close do we come to criminalizing conduct, which is arguably negligent and not simply intentional?

I have thought about several of these questions and many others over the past few days when reading about the ongoing struggles of General Motors (GM) over its Cobalt recall issues and Citigroup in regards to its Mexican banking operations. In an article by Gretchen Morgenson in the New York Times (NYT), entitled “The Wallet as Ethics Enforcer”, where she asked “Who decided—and who agreed—that 90 cents was too much to pay for each switch that would have fixed the problem that apparently led to 13 deaths? How much did that decision add to the bottom line and add to executives’ compensation over the years? What will the company have to pay in possible regulatory penalties and legal settlements?” One of her own answers to these questions reads, “While the shareholders of G.M. will shoulder the cost of the fines, the settlements and loss of trust arising from the mess, the executives responsible for monitoring internal risks like these are unlikely to be held accountable by returning past pay.”

Citigroup, which had previously indicated that it had been the victim of a huge fraud perpetrated by one of its customers in Mexico, Oceanografía. However, now Citigroup now faces both federal criminal and civil investigations over the affair. As reported in a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, entitled “Crime Inquiry Said to Open On Citigroup”, Ben Protess and Michael Corkery reported that both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have opened investigations “focusing in part on whether holes in the bank’s internal controls contributed to the fraud in Mexico. The question for the investigators is whether Citigroup—as other banks have been accused of doing in the context of money laundering—ignored warning signs.” For a bank to be criminally liable, “prosecutors would typically need to show that the bank willfully ignored warning signs of the fraud.” However, to show a civil violation, the threshold is lower and there may only need to be a showing that the bank lacked the proper internal controls or internal oversight.

In her article, Morgenson spoke with Scott M. Stringer, the New York City Comptroller, who is a strong advocate of corporate requirements which “make sure that insiders who engage in questionable conduct are required to pay the piper” in the form of clawback provisions. Stringer has worked with companies to expand clawback provisions beyond those mandated by Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which required “boards to recover some incentive pay from a chief executive and chief financial officer if a company did not comply with financial reporting requirements.” Now, clawbacks have expanded to require executives to return compensation “even if they did not commit the misconduct themselves; they run afoul of the rules by failing to monitor conduct or risk-taking by subordinates.” Stringer believes that such clawback provisions not only “speak to the issue of financial accountability but also to setting a tone at the top.”

Morgenson ends her article by noting that unless GM makes public its internal investigation, “we may never know how many G.M. executives knew about the Cobalt problems and looked the other way.” In the meantime though, this debacle shows the importance of policies that hold high-level employees accountable for conduct that, even if not illegal, can do serious damage to their companies. Directors creating such policies would be sending a clear signal that they take their duties to the company’s owners seriously.”

At this point, we do not know high up the decision went in GM not to install the 90 cent solution. But I would argue it really does not matter. Somewhere in the company, some engineer figured out a solution and indeed one was implemented without changing the part number. I am sure the GM Board would have been sufficiently shocked, just shocked, to find out that such decisions as monetary over safety were going on inside the company. What does all of the information released so far tell us about the culture inside GM when these decisions were made? While I am certainly willing to give current GM Chief Mary Barra the benefit of the doubt about her intentions for the company going forward, particularly after a grueling couple of days before Congress, what do you think the financial incentives were in the company when the 90 cent solution was rejected?

It initially appeared that Citigroup was the victim of a massive fraud perpetrated by one of its customers. However, even initially it was reported that Citigroup let its Mexican operation, Banamex run its own show with very little oversight from the corporate office in New York. Now Citigroup is not only under a civil investigation for lack of proper internal controls but also a criminal investigation for willful ignorance of Banamex’s operations. Does any of this sound far-fetched or perhaps familiar? Think about Frederick Bourke and ‘conscious indifference’. Even the judge in Burke’s criminal trial mused that she did not know if he was a perpetrator or a victim. Perhaps Citigroup is both, but if he was both it certainly did not help Bourke. While I am certainly sure that the Citigroup Board of Directors would also say that it would also simply be shocked, just shocked, to find that there were even insufficient internal controls over Banamex, let alone willful ignorance of criminal actions of its Mexico subsidiary, it does pose the question as to what is the culture at the bank?

As important as clawbacks are, until the message of compliance gets down from the top of an organization, into the middle and then to the bottom, a culture of compliance will not exist. I have worked in an industry where safety is goal number one. But in the same industry I have heard the apocryphal tale of the foreign Regional Manager who is alleged to have said, “If I violate the Code of Conduct, I may or may not get caught. If I violate the Code of Conduct and get caught, I may or may not be punished. If I miss my numbers for two quarters, I will be fired.” Clawbacks for Board members would not have influenced this apocryphal foreign Regional Manager, any more than they would have worked on the psyche of the GM engineers who proposed and then later dropped the 90 cent solution. It was clear to them what their bosses thought was important for them to keep their jobs. As long as management has that message, doing business ethically and in compliance will always take a second seat.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

 

Silver Blaze and Leadership-Find It, Fix It and Prevent It

Today, we continue our Sherlock Holmes week by drawing inspiration for lessons for the compliance practitioner from the story of Silver Blaze. In this story, a star racehorse disappears, Holmes pulls out his usual deductions to determine where the horse can be found but turns to the lack of an action to deduce why the horse was stolen. The lack of a dog bark in the horse’s stable tells Holmes that the thief was known to both the dog and to Silver Blaze.

I thought about the story of Silver Blaze when reading this week’s Corner Office column in the New York Times (NYT), entitled “Want to Succeed? Be Accountable”, by Adam Bryant, where he interviewed Noreen Beaman, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Brinker Capital. Beaman was the oldest of four sisters and this gave her an interesting perspective growing up. She said, “Part of it was having a feedback loop of younger sisters. We were close in age, so they were some of my best informants in high school. They would say: “Really? That wasn’t a great idea. Maybe if you stopped and listened, you would’ve heard what someone was saying.” Clearly she received feedback but it was from a source that she listened to when it provided to her.

After a flush of early success in her career as a company Chief Financial Officer (CFO) she moved into sales. She made a major mistake on a transaction that went sideways. As Beaman put it “I was in the penalty box.” But through hard work and determination, she overcame this error and learned from it. She said that the entire experience made her both more accessible and “it made me have more humility”.

One of the most interesting things that Beaman said was that one of her company’s mantras is “Find it, fix it and prevent it.” That seems to me to be a pretty good way for a compliance practitioner to look at things, particularly if you consider the FCPA Guidance formula of “prevention, detection and remediation” for a best practices anti-corruption compliance program. To facilitate this culture, Beaman said that one of the skills valued at Brinker Capital is accountability. She said, “We make sure everyone’s in a position to be successful. Then, when you’re not successful, we have to have a conversation. You need to hold up your end of the bargain. Sometimes you’re not a good culture fit because you don’t want to be held accountable, and sometimes you’re a great culture fit and we just didn’t give you the right training, so we’ll do that. Sometimes you’ll make a mistake. Life happens. But let’s not do it again.”

For the compliance practitioner, I think that Beaman’s example demonstrates the need for a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) to take the initiative in showing how the role they play inside the organization is far more than just a legal minimum or people-based risk management. A CCO, and indeed the entire compliance function, should be seen as a partner to the business folks. This will help to create the deeper relationships that will not only make it easier for the group to do its job, but also help it to be seen as a vital part of the organization’s long-term strategy. It will also help when there is something askance in the compliance function. As noted by Mike Volkov, in his blog post entitled “Chief Compliance Officers: Under a Microscope”, CCOs have to educate the Board and the C-Suite on what exactly is reasonable to expect and how the compliance program is designed to achieve these results.  Along the way, CCOs have to make sure they can show that compliance is a valuable contributor to the company’s bottom line.

Beaman also said one thing that I have heard numerous CEOs say over the years, which is that one of the most important skills they have learned is listening. Beaman related “You have to be a little more indulgent with people sharing ideas around the table, even if 25 percent of them are distractions. C.E.O.’s are usually Type A’s to begin with, and I’m a little chatty. And now I’m in this room full of smart, dynamic people who all want to be heard. So what I had to learn is to be quiet, to listen, to keep everyone committed and at the table.”

As a hard charger, she does want to make decisions and move on. So she has to consciously slow herself down, “to really slow down and be present in the moment.” Part of this turns on setting “realistic expectations and goals, and be sensitive to the tempo around you. It’s about meeting people where they are as opposed to expecting people to meet you where you are. Everyone comes from a different point of view. I have a big personality and I know that I can come on a little strong, so a lot of times I’ll slow it down.”

Beaman also had some interesting thoughts on interviewing. She is clearly engaged by potential hires that are intellectually curious. One of the things that she considers is whether the interviewee has any questions for her. She said that “One, it tells me if you’ve prepped. Two, it tells me how interested you are.” A second thing that she inquires about what books they read. If they are not a book reader, she asks about magazines and newspapers. She related that “I’m interested to know how intellectually curious you are. In our world today, if you’re not actively learning every day, you really are not competitive. There’s too much going on. I can never know everything going on around me, so I need to know that there are people around me who are learning other things, so we create a more cohesive view.”

For the compliance professional out there interviewing, I found these last couple of points quite instructive. Many times it seems that there is so much information in the compliance field that it is difficult to keep up in our profession. But here, the CEO of a major corporation wants to see intellectual curiosity in candidates because she believes this will make a better employee.

Beaman’s journey certainly has been wide-ranging. I believe that her experience can assist the compliance practitioner with ways to think about his or her position within a company and how it can be executed. And just like in Silver Blaze, sometimes when nothing is said, it speaks louder than mere words…

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

Lessons from a Soccer Manager for the Compliance Practitioner

Compliance leadership can take many forms and inspiration can come from many different sources. I was reminded of this when I read an article in this past weekend’s Financial Times (FT), entitled “How I coach Ronaldo and other secrets”, by Simon Kuper who wrote the piece based upon his interview of Real Madrid manager, Carlo Ancelotti.

Ancelotti grew up professionally playing in Italy’s Seria A, the top league in that soccer-crazed country. So he brings a player perspective to his job. He also rose in the soccer coaching ranks, with stops at Juventus and AC Milan in Italy; then Chelsea in England; followed by Paris Saint-Germain in France before taking over the reins at Real Madrid in Spain. So he has been both a practitioner and an executive. I found some of his thoughts on coaching very insightful for the compliance practitioner.

Coaching a Multi-National Team – Translating Your Compliance Program into Native Languages

While at AC Milan, Ancelotti coached a wide number of different nationalities so being able to communicate with them was critical. This was important when coaching in Italy but Ancelotti found it much more difficult when he moved to England to take over as the manager for Chelsea. He said the hardest part of the communication piece was how “to show emotion”. As any compliance practitioner for an international business concern recognizes, communicating in a multiplicity of languages is a paramount skill.

This is an area that is receiving increasing attention from the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a component of a best practices compliance program. In the FCPA Guidance, under the Ten Hallmarks of an Effective Compliance Program, it intones that a company’s Code of Conduct and it’s compliance policies need to be clear and concise. However, equally noted is that the Guidance makes clear that if a company has a large employee base that is not fluent in English such documents need to be translated into the native language of those employees.

Trusting Your Players – Getting Buy-In For Your Compliance Program

While managing Chelsea, before the 2010 FC Cup final against Portsmouth, “Ancelotti did something unusual: after naming the starting 11, he asked them to decide the match strategy themselves.” He recalls: “Everyone said one thing. For example, [goalkeeper Petr] Cech said, ‘You have to control the space behind, to avoid the counter-attack.’ That season we played 60 games, and 60 times I made the strategy. So I think the players understood very well what they had to do.” When asked why he would try something so risky before such an important match, Ancelotti responded, “I was sure the players followed the strategy, because they made the strategy. Sometimes I make the strategy, but you don’t know if the players really understand.” His tactic worked and Chelsea beat Portsmouth 1-0 to complete the rare double of winning the English Premier League and the FA Cup.

What Ancelotti had hit upon was engaging his players. You should view every interaction as an opportunity to tap into the expertise of your workforce. This requires you to let employees say what they think. One of the first (and most insistent) questions you will face as a compliance practitioner is explaining how and why the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) applies to a country and culture far from the United States. Another related question is often along the lines of the endemic corruption in a country and how the business unit personnel cannot do business any other way. Let your co-workers express these thought and sentiments and then explain why the law(s) applies and how they can do business going forward. The business unit will usually have a solution to these problems and if you can get them to engage with you, it may well be a solution for you and the company. My experience is that they will generally have the correct response for you, even if they do not understand the nuances of the FCPA, UK Bribery Act or other anti-corruption law. But if you can have the employees understand that it is there program, you will have greater buy-in and greater participation in your compliance regime.

Managing from the Ground Up – Thoughts on Building a Compliance Program

After his stint at Chelsea, Ancelotti moved on to Paris Saint-Germain in France. Here he found a different set of challenges. The first was dedication to the program and lack of professionalism. As Ancelotti explained, “The problem of the English player – sometimes it’s difficult for them to understand that they don’t have to work 100 per cent in training. There are some training sessions where it’s important not to work 100 per cent. The French don’t understand why they have to work 100 per cent every day.” This attitude was acerbated by factionalism; the team was made up of ethnic factions. Ancelotti said, “We had the South Americans, the French, the Italians,” and “The relationship is not easy. The South Americans like to play with each other. The Italians the same. The players were not used to having a winning mentality.” Simply put, he had to change the attitude of the players.

How can you begin this process in a compliance regime? Writing in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) authors Linda Hill and Kent Linebeck, in an article entitled “Are You A Good Boss or a Great One”, said that leadership had three imperatives, which are to (1) Manage Yourself; (2) Manage Your Network; and (3) Manage Your Team. These three imperatives provide a good framework for the compliance practitioner.

Most employees ask the question “Can I trust this person?” Leadership results, in large part, by the answer to this question. Trust has two components; the first is that the leader has confidence in his or her own competence; and the second is that employees have trust in the manager’s character. This means that your motives are good and that you want people to do well. If these characteristics are present a manager should be able to influence others.

Next building key relationships throughout an organization leads to the road for success. This means nurturing a broad network of company employees who can influence specific areas and the departments within a company. As scarce resources must be reckoned with on any project, the person who can show the interdependence of seemingly disparate groups, which may have conflicting goals and priorities, is the manager who achieves the most. This relationship building can be a key way to influence others within an organization over which a manager does not have direct control.

Lastly, managing a team is a different dynamic than managing one-on-one. If a manager can influence a team, they have a greater chance of success as employees tend to be more creative and productive when working in groups. Accountability to other team members and a genuine conviction that they are all in it together can lead to a group coalescing into a team. The culture of any team is important: values, standards and norms guide employees in what is expected of them. Attention must be paid to all team members and recognition for individual efforts within the team can bring greater effectiveness as well.

To be a great compliance leader, the compliance professional must use all of these techniques. To achieve many compliance goals within a company requires a manager to exert a great amount of influence. The techniques set out by the authors provide direct tools for the compliance professional to utilize in this task. Managing employees within any compliance department is the first step. A compliance professional must reach out across an organization to all groups and departments to develop relationships, which can be used in furthering a company’s compliance goals. A compelling team creates the foundation of this strong network and a strong network will allow your compliance team a path to achieve its goals within the company. But knowing where you are going is only half of the journey. The authors end with the admonition that “you need to know at all times where you are on the journey and what you must do to make progress.”

Obviously Ancelotti has been successful at many different stops in his career. Some of the tips that Kuper wrote about in this article can be useful for the compliance practitioner dealing with a diverse multi-national employee base.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2014

Sammy Baugh in 1943: Do It the Right Way

2013 is the 70^th anniversary of one of the greatest individual seasons in pro football. In 1943, Sammy Baugh, playing for the Washington professional football team, had what Sports Illustrated said one of the greatest season’s a player has ever sustained. Playing at time when football players played both ways and usually the entire game, Sports Illustrated detailed the following of Baugh’s accomplishments:

• He completed 55.6 percent of his passes, best in the NFL that year.
• He threw 23 touchdowns passes, second in the NFL—and third-highest all-time to that point.
• As a defensive back, he had 11 interceptions, which broke another league record.
• He averaged an NFL-leading 45.9 yards a punt, often flipping the field with a well-timed quick kick.
• Five of his boots were longer than 70 yards.
• He had arguably the greatest single-game performance in history: In a 42-20 win over the Detroit Lions on Nov. 14, Baugh fired four touchdown passes, intercepted four passes and got off an 81-yard punt, the longest of the year in the NFL.

Baugh won and he won doing things the right way. I thought about his accomplishments when I read a recent article, entitled “Decisiveness Is a Double-Edged Sword”, in the Corner Office section of the New York Times (NYT) by Adam Bryant in his interview of David Cote, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Honeywell International Inc. In the article Cote explained that “Your job as a leader is to be right at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning.” Cote explained that he had a “reputation for being decisive. Most people would say that being decisive is what you want in a business leader. But it’s possible for decisiveness to be a bad thing. Because if you’re decisive, you want to make decisions — give me what you’ve got, and I’ll make a decision. I’d say that the lower you are in an organization, you can get away with a lot of that and you’ll be applauded for it.”

I found Cote’s approach a good way to explain the role of top corporate leadership in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) compliance program. When I meet with a new client I explain to the President or CEO what his or her role is in a compliance regime. It is to be a leader and not simply to set the right tone for doing business ethically and in compliance but also ‘walking the walk’ of compliance. In other words, continually reminding the troops to do business the right way.

Further, you have to turn your pride and emotions aside at times because “it’s important to be smart and to think about what’s important.” Cote said that one of the most important behaviors at Honeywell is that you have to get results “and you have to get them the right way.” I thought about the way that Cote phrased it, “and you have to get them the right way.” Cote wants his team to make their quarterly numbers but he wants it done the right way “with the right kind of processes” and those right kinds of processes are financial and compliance controls to help the company to do business the right way going forward.

I once worked for a company where a regional manager was alleged to have said the following: If I violate the Code of Conduct, I may or may not get caught. If I violate the Code of Conduct and get caught, I may or may not be disciplined. If I miss my numbers for two quarters, I will be fired. And guess what – that regional manager never missed his quarterly numbers. Further, he was promoted for his “great” work.

What type of message do you think that this un-named regional manager’s aphorism, his quarterly numbers and, most importantly, the company’s treatment of him going forward sent throughout the region? It was pretty clear that making your numbers is all that top management wanted communicated down through the organization. Conversely, I have heard a compliance professional from another company in the same sector say that it is the business unit’s leader’s responsibility to make the numbers within the structure of the company’s compliance regime. It is not up to the compliance function to figure out how the operations manager should do business but the other way around.

But, equally significant, is the difference in focus between Cote and this un-named regional manager. Cote’s has a long term perspective in place and is thinking long term. He is considering something beyond, weeks, months, the next quarter or even the next two quarters. What Cote said in the NYT piece is that one of the reasons he desires to have the right financial and compliance controls in place is so that “we can make the quarter three years from now and five years from now.” Our un-named regional manager has no such focus; he is only looking at the next sale in front of him because if he does not make his numbers he will be fired. I do not think there can be a stronger message from management than to make your numbers “the right way”.

Just as Slinging Sammy Baugh had a season for the ages some 70 years ago, your compliance program can achieve the goals of doing business the right way if you have a CEO like David Cote. He believes that it is important to get your decisions right and to do business the right way. That is a message that can be translated from senior management down to the middle and the bottom of a company. That is what a compliance practitioner can ask of his or her leaders.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2013

An Inspired Choice – Ethical Leadership Under Difficult Circumstances

I am attending Compliance Week 2013 through Wednesday. As usual Matt Kelly and the Compliance Week team have put together a first rate program for the event. There have been, and will be over the next couple of days, some very informative panels, speakers, roundtables and conversations. The conference began today with a talk by Retired Major General Lewis MacKenzie, the former head of the United Nations peacekeeping forces. Although General MacKenzie’s choice as the initial keynote speaker of the conference might not seem self-obvious, I found Matt Kelly’s invitation to the General to speak and his position as the first speaker on the first day of the conference, were both inspired decisions.

The theme of his talk was how to maintain ethical leadership under difficult circumstances. Matt Kelly posed the question to the General of “how do you speak the truth to power?” The General began his remarks by giving his definition of leadership, which as he said was “getting people to do what they don’t want to do and having them enjoy it while they are doing it.” Based on that definition and his remarks below, I came to see why Matt wanted the General to speak to a gathering of compliance professionals on ethical leadership under difficult circumstances.

The General said that it all starts with a leader being him or herself, after they take the reins of leadership. He believes that people usually rise to a high level in an organization because of technical competence, coupled with the relationships they developed along the way. He believes that a leader must strive to maintain those relationships because that is the key to information flow both upwards to the top and down through the organization. A leader must take all pains not to become isolated.

The General believes that relationships work in several critical areas. The first is that a leader can utilize the talents of his subordinates to not only understand but to overcome obstacles. But equally important is that by having a relationship with someone, it may provide an avenue to resolve a matter before it blows up into a full financial reporting issue or even criminal issue. He said that he would try to find out the one thing that his troops were passionate about and he could use that information “as a window into what they think about the organization.”

He designated his next point with the acronym, LWWA, or ‘leading while walking around’. He said that to get people to do things, a leader must get out of the office and talk to people. But he cautioned that it is more than simply talking to people, as he believes a critical skill of a leader is to listen as well. To this skill, he said that rather than hear someone and think about what your response might be, you should actually listen to what they have to say. He found that by listening good ideas could come up to him and then he could implement them and get the credit.

The General talked about courage. By this he did not mean the courage to lead a charge up a hill, but rather, he meant the courage to say no and to hear someone who says no to you. He believes it is the job of a leader to set the tone for an organization. A leader must teach his subordinates to have the courage to disagree with him or as he said “disagree without being disagreeable”. If one of the first things you do in a leadership position is belittle or defame publicly someone who disagrees with you, no one will do so in the future.  For a leader to succeed, the General believes that a speak up culture must exist. To do so, a leader must make it acceptable and safe for subordinates to say no.

It is the job of a leader to accept responsibility. In an interesting exercise, the General asked the entire audience of over 500 conference participants to raise their hand if they had ever been criticized for being ‘too responsible’. He then asked anyone in the audience to raise their hand if they had criticized someone else for being ‘too responsible’. No one person raised their hand in response to either query. It is clear that the General believes a leader must take responsibility. Further, there is no ‘but’ which follows the line “I am responsible”. In other words, no ifs, ands, or buts are allowed when it comes to a leader taking responsibility.

The General said that one of the best ways he found to motivate people was to give them a job which had difficult but not impossible objectives to success. This has two benefits. The first was that most people would be motivated to try and achieve the difficult objective. However the second was more long term. By achieving the results, the person or team had something to brag about and it gave them greater confidence going forward. This is particularly true if there is a metric which can be used to demonstrate the overcoming of the obstacle. However, a leader must not set a high or unreasonable objective that it can only be achieved by “breaking the back of the organization.”

The General took some questions from the audience. One that I found applicable to the compliance arena was about resources. Specifically he was asked how to carry out missions with limited resources. He tied his answer back into his thoughts on relationship. He said that people want to contribute their ideas. If you give them a means to do so, in a speak up culture, they can be your best resource. An army has often times to do more with less and must do so on the fly. But this same concept translates to civilian employees who want their company to succeed and can stand ready with ideas to assist you moving forward toward your objective.

If you are a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) or in a senior leadership position, you should think about the General’s remarks in the context of what you and how you do it, within your organization. Do you have relationships with other key members of senior management so that you can go to them, not only when things are going well, but more importantly when they are not going well or a crisis has arisen? Do you have a speak up culture at your company? If not why not, as that certainly is a part of any best practices compliance program under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or UK Bribery Act.

Lastly, think about the General’s remarks on resources. One never has all the resources you need or even think that you want. But use the talent that is available to you. There are other professionals in your company who do not work in the compliance department but are equally dedicated to doing business ethically and in compliance. Human Resources and Internal Audit are but two prime examples. Seek them out and ask their assistance. I think you may be well surprised at the solutions they can provide or suggest to you.

As I said, by the end of General MacKenzie’s talk, I had come to believe that Matt Kelly made an inspired decision not only to invite him to speak to the conference but to be the first speaker out of the box. It has set a great tone for the event.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2013

10 Questions to Better Management Practices in a FCPA Program

One of the things that I sorely lacked when I worked in-house was any guidance on management practices towards the implementation of either legal or compliance initiatives. Most legal and compliance departments do not train their attorneys or compliance practitioners on management practices for compliance program implementation, enhancements or upgrades after a risk assessment. I was therefore very intrigued when I came across an article in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review, entitled “Does Management Really Work?” by Nicholas Brown, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen. I found the article very useful because it gave succinct advice about what a business can do to improve its management practices and determined that this advice can be applicable to a compliance program.

The authors tested three essential practices which they believe can address even the most complex global problems. The three principles which they believe “are generally considered to be the essentials of good management” are:

• Targets: Does the organization support long term goals with tough but achievable short-term performance benchmarks?
• Incentives: Does the organization reward high performers with promotions and bonuses while retraining or moving underperformers?
• Monitoring: Does the organization rigorously collect and analyze performance data to identify opportunities for improvement?

You might read these and immediately think about Paul McNulty’s (Three) Maxims. I, however, believe that these three management practices can provide some assistance beyond McNulty’s queries. In the article the authors research showed that by the use of these three techniques businesses could not only set parameters but also measure on them, generally had more and better productivity and overall better financial health.

From the compliance perspective how can one use these three relatively straight forward techniques? Interestingly the authors revealed some of the questions used in interviews with over 8,000 manufacturers who were interviewed in this project. I have selected 10 questions which you might want to put use as a starting point for managing your compliance initiatives going forward as I believe that they are very good questions to use in formulating a plan for compliance program implementation or upgrade. I would challenge you to think about some of the answers to these questions in the context of your compliance program.

1. Interconnectedness of Targets – How are compliance goals cascaded down to individual workers? Everyone recognizes the importance of ‘tone-at-the-top’ as it is enshrined in the US Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) minimum best practices compliance regime and the UK Bribery Act’s Six Principles of an Adequate Procedures compliance program. However, as many commentators now recognize, it is also tone in the middle and at the bottom, which may equally matter. So how do you ascertain and ensure that top management’s message gets cascaded down into your organization?
2. Clarity and Comparability of Goals – Does anyone complain that your compliance targets are too complex? Certainly the initial role out of a compliance program can be quite a large undertaking. Perhaps another approach might be to focus on high risk areas and remediate them by rolling out initiatives to manage those risks first and then move to other areas. Many companies have reviewed and remedied the third party sales side of their business but are only now looking at the Supply Chain or Procurement side of the equation. If you work on one such problem at a time, it can help move the overall process forward in a more orderly fashion.
3. Consequence Management – How do you deal with repeated compliance failures in a specific business segment or compliance program area? This is certainly one question that you would want to consider carefully. Do you have problems with one business unit or one geographic area from the compliance perspective? Are gifts in China, for example, an ongoing issue for your company? What about travel and entertainment? Areas that show up again and again will merit more focused attention.
4. Instilling a Mind-Set – How do senior managers show that attracting and developing talent who will engage in ethical business conduct is a top priority? Here you should consider bringing in your Human Resources Department for not only assistance but their expertise. If top management will make a commitment to this, you should work to create the appropriate mind-set of doing business the right way throughout your organization.
5. Removing Poor Performers – How long is compliance underperforming tolerated? In many ways, this question is the flip side of number 4 above. I think that many companies would clearly say that they will discipline, up to and including discharge, any employee who engages in practices which violates the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or UK Bribery Act. But this question drills deeper and forces a more rigorous analysis on not just FCPA failures by employees but poor ethical choices which may be less than full FCPA violations.
6. Unique Employee Value Proposition – What makes it distinctive to work at your company? More pointedly, how can your compliance challenges be turned into business leadership opportunities? Ethisphere annually shows that its top list of the Most Ethical Companies out performs the Standard & Poor (S&P) 500. If you can turn the distinctiveness of what your company does into a compliance plus in the marketplace, it could well make your business more profitable.
7. Continuous Improvement – How do compliance programs that are not working typically get exposed and fixed? There is a difference between auditing and monitoring. Monitoring is a commitment to reviewing and detecting compliance programs in real time and then reacting quickly to remediate them. A primary goal of monitoring is to identify and address gaps in your program on a regular and consistent basis. Auditing is a more limited review that targets a specific business component, region or market sector during a particular timeframe in order to uncover and/or evaluate certain risks, particularly as seen in financial records. A robust program should include separate functions for auditing and monitoring. While unique in protocol, the two functions are related and can operate in tandem. Monitoring activities can sometimes lead to audits.  For example, if you notice a trend of suspicious payments in recent monitoring reports from a country in the Far East, it may be time to conduct an audit of those operations to further investigate the issue.
8. Performance Tracking – What key compliance indicators do you use for compliance tracking? Here you need to look at the metrics which you have developed. A good starting point can be with your hotline or helpline. What can you determine from the calls or reports which come in through these systems? What if you have not had any reports for several years, what should that be telling you about your communication to your employee base? Or does it mean that people have not been properly and effectively trained that a hotline or helpline exists and is available for their use or, more ominously, are afraid to make any reports for fear of retaliation or even losing their jobs? This is certainly something you should take a good look into, whichever way the metrics are going for your company.
9. Performance Dialogue – For a given compliance problem, how do you identify the root cause?  If you do not know what the cause of a problem is, you cannot successfully work towards remedying that problem. This does not simply mean firing any persons involved in a potential FCPA violation. You need to dig down and found out what allowed this issue to arise. I once heard that the difference between Japanese and American post-incident investigations is that in the US there is an attempt to assess blame, conversely in Japan there is an attempt to find a solution to the problem. This is the approach that I believe compliance practitioners should take, to try and find a solution by determining the root cause of a compliance failure.
10. Retaining – What are you doing to retain your top employees from the compliance perspective? This is not a question that is typically asked in the compliance department. But one thing you can look at is what your company is doing to retain, promote and take to senior management those employees who do business in an ethical manner and in compliance with your company Code of Conduct.

I found the article to be very useful when applied to the compliance practitioner by not only using the triumvirate of targets, incentives and monitoring as a management practice but also the questions that the authors posed in the context of your company’s own compliance program. We continually face the challenge of keeping up with the ever evolving compliance best practices with little or no budget increase. I found that this article had points which you can ask yourself, and of your compliance program, which can facilitate a robust discussion that can highlight areas for improvement.

This publication contains general information only and is based on the experiences and research of the author. The author is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, legal advice, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such legal advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified legal advisor. The author, his affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or entity that relies on this publication. The Author gives his permission to link, post, distribute, or reference this article for any lawful purpose, provided attribution is made to the author. The author can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com.

© Thomas R. Fox, 2012