Culture of ethics: catching people in rather than out

"It's alright, When people do something wrong we'll catch them out"
the Head of Risk Compliance told us

The compliance guy's view sounds sensible, doesn't it, in the circumstances. Except that catching them out afterwards is already too late.

This was a global engineering firm, in rehabilitation with the regulator after a fine and prosecution for a serious ethical misconduct.

I was running a programme of ethics and values with them and their CEO who said 

"We need to build a culture of ethics"

But in fact catching-people-out undermines a culture of ethics. 

It's more important to catch-people-in: so that they know they have done the right thing. 

This helps avoid doing the wrong thing, and helps people know why it all matters. That's the best way to avoid ethical contraventions and keep on the fair side of the regulator.

In the same client company, the CEO shared concerns that it was taking too long to recover market position and investor confidence. After damage to reputation it was much harder to heal relationships than they expected.

The COO was worried about lack of innovation,  too long to get things to market - competitors were beating them. 
And the biggest concern was lack of collaboration. The problem of silos and infighting between divisions and constituent businesses was worse then ever. People pulled back into small teams and cabals.
Well of course they did. They were scared of being caught out.

Far from making the company stronger, the whole ‘catching-them-out’ approach had caused another huge problem:
inertia 

We saw all the cultural symptoms:

• People looking over their shoulder…
• Afraid to ask a question or check…
• Lack of trust between colleagues…
• Restricts ideas...
• Creates dependency...
• Crushes confidence...

This will kill the business.

No risk, no gain.

Inertia is a crippling business risk. 

How do you take the right risks with the right safety measures? 

Manage risk rather than avoid it?

By catching people in.

The regulatory bodies are no soft touch. It's not a question of paying a fine and getting on with business as usual. The company has to show how they’ve changed, especially how culture has changed, how this can be measured and sustained.

To do this, organisations need a clear code of conduct and careful management legal and conduct risk. They need to provide guidance to make every day decisions, and an environment of candour and confidence around risk.

• Reinforce the guidelines
• Show what ‘doing the right thing’ means, and why this matters
• Provide context overall and relevance to each part of the business
• Help people navigate the grey areas

With the engineering company, we made the principles really clear and trained managers in using a toolkit. Catching people in was a big part of the success. 

• Reaffirm good decisions
• Share what’s gone wrong in a way that people can learn how to do it better
• Share what’s gone right and how this helped to manage risk
• Acknowledge the small actions and choices made every day
• Say thank you for taking the time to listen or for raising the issue so we can manage the risk

Upholding ethics needs to be a fast reaction. This works best when people are confident about doing the right thing – not because someone’s watching or telling you what to do.

That’s why ethics comes down to commitment more than compliance: Doing the right thing because you WANT to, not just because you have to.

And commitment begins with Belonging, choosing to uphold the principles of the organisation you belong to. Belonging makes ethics a team thing: shared responsibility.

This is far more powerful - and commercially productive - than an army of compliance officers telling you what you can't do.

Go on, find a colleague who’s done the right thing: catch them in.

We help organisations create a culture of ethics and belonging

Drop a line if you'd like to try our toolkits for 'How to deal with ethical dilemmas' and 'Catching people in' 

isabel@belongingspace.com
www.belongingspace.com


See also
Freedom to Speak Up: Candour and ethics
http://belongingspace.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/freedom-to-speak-up-candour-leads-to.html

Racism turns the beautiful game ugly

Football is once again in the news for the wrong reasons. 

Footage from The Guardian of Chelsea fans on the Paris Metro blocking a black man from entering a carriage and chanting
“We’re racist, we’re racist, and that’s the way we like it”

Football has too long been a comfortable place for the spores of racism to multiply.

The sheer pleasure of the game, the sociability, the passing of time marked by adventures together to matches, the shared elation at success, commiseration and post mortems at being robbed: all beautiful. How sad when the bonding turns ugly.

Last year I asked a mate, a gentle giant and long term Spurs fan, about the chants of Yid Army at White Hart Lane. He pointed out the positive origins, a chant of pride in identity.

“Aah it’s great!” he said 

“You’re in there with thousands of you, and the chant builds up, and it just takes you over.
You lose yourself in it. It’s a brilliant feeling.”

And that’s just the point. More like going to a Celtic battle than a sporting event. The face paint could be woad.

It’s all too easy for human beings to lose individuality in a crowd. Our inate tribalism takes over:

‘Someone looks like me, sounds like me, thinks like me: I feel safe. Let’s keep the others out.’

The small-mindedness of small tribes is our biggest threat.

21^st century life requires us to belong to many tribes.

Interdependence remains a tough challenge for societies: tolerance needs to work harder, not be taken for granted.

In organisations it may not be as obvious – no chanting or flags – but the strength of groupthink can quickly become prejudice. Unconscious bias influences us all.

Whether it’s around race, social background, gender, sexuality, mental health, our blind spots affect our decisions. Harvard University’s ‘Project Implicit’ has a great online test: the results may surprise you.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Back to the football. Nice words from Chelsea, that the fans actions have "no place in football or society".

If racist bullying has no place, show us, don’t just tell us. 

Demonstrate a show of tolerance, open up the blind spots.

Let's hope football fans react with more than a reassuring chuckle or an easy wave away with a hand of anything serious behind it. As a fan said to me on the Jubilee line (I live a few stops below Wembley), the carriage shaking with chanting and stamping, a tone of menace on that day rather than the usual exuberance:

 “Ah no, you don’t understand love, it’s just banter”

Banter can mean camaraderie. But it can also be the respectable mask for bigotry.

Be wary.

Do your tribes work well together?

How deep is unconscious bias in your culture?

Talk to us about a quick litmus test to check

We help organisations create a sense belonging

isabel@belongingspace.com
www.belongingspace.com

Freedom to speak up: candour leads to commitment, much more powerful than compliance

"I have been so depressed by this experience that I have often considered suicide.... I have lost all faith in the NHS and the employment tribunal system"

One of the witnesses quoted in Sir Robert Francis' review of NHS culture, the Freedom To Speak Up Report, published yesterday.

Candour is the foundation of a healthy culture.

The overriding culture of an organisation can be measured in the ease - or tension - of daily conversations.

It's easy for leaders to say "We need a culture of ethics" but hard to do.

To mak it so, a simple code of principles is far more useful than complex rules.

When rules and compliance take over, candour is the first casualty. That’s when ethics starts to go wrong. 

The cultural symptoms are easy to spot. People look over their shoulder, 'doing the right thing' becomes 'doing what I'm told and not thinking for myself'. Blame, control, fear take over. Inertia sets in. People are suspicious, the maverick voice is isolated, a mania of Cc-ing emails.

In a culture of principles rather than rules, something different happens. Within a shared belief of what we stand for, it's easier to open up. People feel permission to ask the tricky questions, confident that this is helpful not risky.

Candour comes when it is demonstrated to be safe and open, that sensitive matters can still be discussed in a common sense way. It's ordinary, everyday.

Candour becomes normal, part of 'how we do things'.

That’s why values need to be active - not just a list of words on a wall.

In cultures based on rules and regulation candour closes up.

And, as the NHS has seen, this will cause a whole lot more ethical risk than it prevents.

Francis calls for a culture in which

"Speaking up about what worries them is a normal part of everyone's routine"

A culture of principles leads to candour and commitment: compliance leads only to control or censure.

The foundation is the basis of belonging:

- purpose (what we're here for)
and
- ethos (what we stand for).

On top of this, the principles Francis has outlined allow openness and candour to flourish.

This sets the context, so that code of conduct, or policies for specific roles, can be more easily observed.

The new recommendations, which the health minister has committed to takingseriously, include:

• All staff feel safe to raise their concerns
• Leaders to demonstrate that they encourage raising concerns
• Chance for reflection on learning from experiences and how to improve
• Guardians for whistleblowers and those who want to speak up

This is relevant to any organisation, far beyond the specific context of the NHS.

Francis conducted a comprehensive study of experiences across the NHS, getting right to frontline. He stresses the need for informal exchange, early in concerns, rather than reliance on structure and bureaucracy. This resonates with what I've seen in many organisations recovering from regulatory ethical contravention or prosecution.

He acknowledges many examples of great practice and stresses that it's not just whistle blowing or raising issues that matters:

"My review also brought home to me how challenging it can be to receive concerns - issues can be difficult and sensitive to solve"

And of course, like healthcare, ethical prevention is better than cure.

If you have to blow the whistle it's already too late.

That's why freedom to speak up is so critical.

Do you have a culture of candour?

Talk to us about a quick litmus test to check

We help organisations create a culture of ethics and belonging

isabel@belongingspace.com
www.belongingspace.com