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

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

Culturevist and other (positive and respectable) C-words

Plenty of inspiration at the Culturevist event last night, in (positive and respectable) C-words.

Matt Partovi set up Culturevist just over a year ago, as a forum for Culture Activists.

He said he was 

"looking to find people who felt as passionately as I do about culture in business, to share ideas and challenges". 

He was happy if five people turned up to the first event: he reached over 80. 

And last night, the 9^th meet-up, 120 people took part, from all kinds of professional background and stages of life.

The theme was:

"Open Source Culture: What happens when everyone has a say?"

The format, five speakers with five-minute presentations, sparked stimulation.

Our hosts yesterday were ustwo, a global digital product studio with a particularly open and vibrant culture.

In ustwo's environment of structured-randomness - comfy sofas, drawings on the pillars, goldfish, and a tailor's dummy in a pink wig - we loosened quickly into an open conversation ourselves. Beyond the surface this was far more than the trappings of yet another groovy Shoreditch agency. 

Clarity and candour

Collin Lyons shared 11 key points of what makes the culture tick at ustwo, beginning with why you will never forget your first day as a member of the team

"Because you will be given the best welcome you will ever get, from everybody, all day". 

You are quickly, completely, invited in as part of the group.

The principle of openness and transparency runs through everything. 

"But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Being this open means facing some tough issues".

In his next two points: 

- Hire for culture

- Communicate transparently

Collin shared the benefits of candour: deep principles with practical application and the commitment of all employees.

Perry Timms has tweeted notes on Collin's full list. 

Size is important for an open culture. There are around 200/220 people at ustwo globally, but a principle to have no more than 120 in any one studio. Clever, keeping just below Dunbar's number of 150, will help to keep a sense of Belonging and community. 

As always, when culture drives business success, it's not just nice: it has a point. For ustwo openness is essential for the demands of digital development. The work they do is fast, requires agility and constant iteration. The goal is to get things out and working, improvement rather than perfect and absolute. So if team members are not direct, or if small groups are huddled separately from each other, that will block the flow. 

Openness makes for  commercial health as well as personal reward at work, everybody thrives as a result.

Culture Hacking and Mapping

Esko Reinikainen @reinikainen of The SatoriLab 

introduced himself as a Culture Hacker who works for government helping to build culture for people who don't know what it is and don't want it.

A Finn based in Wales getting public bodies to change the way they think and interact: Esko surely has plenty of cross-cultural experience.

His specialism is how to narrow the gap between what we say and what we do. He gave an example of company whose claims of  

“We have an open culture”

were trashed in the daily reality of  

“My manager says if I know what's good for me I'll keep my mouth shut”.

Generously Esko has shared an example of the Culture Map, developed with David Gray, via twitter @reinikainen 

Coupling top-down with bottom-up

Laura-Jane Parker talked through experiences of nurturing culture at Direct Line after the split away from Royal Bank of Scotland: a tale of DeBelonging and ReBelonging. 

She shared the importance - alongside bottom-up development - of top-down leadership of values and culture. Culture belongs to everyone but leaders must, well, lead. As soon as leaders use the language of 'Us' and 'Them' the unity of culture is lost. The values are just nice words on a wall, not reality.

Commitment

Nick Matthews of Yammer's gave us three rules for openness

1) You really have to want to do it 

2) Choose your medium 

3) Leaders must lead 

He described commitment with no compromise. 

"If you want an open culture you have to really go for it".

Control and community

William Higham, a futurist from The Next Big Thing Company, pointed out how connected we are in almost every aspect of life: except at work. Organisations have much to catch up on to make culture and internal communication as connected as contact with customers.

He pointed us to two Cs for the future of corporate culture- Contol and Community. Control not just by those at the top, but in an agile way across the business. Community in a more fluid exchange of like minds and support, all connected.

Conversation

The quietly incisive Tom Nixon of Nixon McInnes suggested we all introduce ourselves with 

"What I need is..." 

so that we could match up conversations to offer appropriate support.  

It worked a treat. Plenty of evidence for David Gurteen's @Davidgurteen research on the power of conversations in business. 

(Un)Conference

And finally, Matt's specialism, a short unconference where people offered a subject and self-managed discussion in small groups.

Conclusion

Open source culture can make a powerful difference to organisations' success: and it takes commitment to keep it up.

One year in to Culturevist, there is an open conversation in this group. And, with the lightest-touch of control and intuitive culture, a clear sense of Belonging.

We even have some symbols (badges!) and habits - we like loose structure, fluidity and informal environments. We Culturevists share a purpose, and an ethos, we have developed a community and camaraderie. And we're keen to put our shared talents to mutual support and good use.

Well done Matt and Culturevists: we set out to chat and have built a community.

 

Join the next Culturevist event

http://www.culturevist.com/about/

@culturevist 

Does your organisation have a strong sense of belonging?
Talk to us about how to create effectiveness from Belonging.
 
isabel@belongingspace.com
www.belongingspace.com

The confusion of NOT Belonging: "No, we're not them, they're different and we're separate"

I was at a North London hospital yesterday accompanying a friend. We signed in at reception, she was called in to her appointment, I could see some patients returned back to the waiting area for a while after a prep session.

So I asked at reception whether I should stay-put to give smiling support to my friend, or go down to the café.

The receptionist answered:

"Oh, I couldn't tell you about that. We're not them."

Confusing.

"Well, how long might she be?"

"No, we're not them, they're different and we're separate."

It was a Lewis Carroll conversation: the person you are looking to for help is explaining not only that they can't help you but that they shouldn't, because they are not part of the group that would be able to help you.

She defined her lack of help through NOT belonging to the department my friend was seeing. She reinforced the internal structures:

"They just lease the space from us."

Uh? It's all one NHS hospital, we weren’t in a private wing or external company.

Then, Status:

"We're Surgical. We do day surgery. A whole lot of top specialists doing lots of different things. ‘They’ just do one thing."

And finally, NON accountability.

She was not accountable for looking after the patients of ‘Them’ beyond signing-in. So, you see, she couldn't possibly help me.

The problem for this member of staff was sharing a reception service with another department which used to be separate. Though her job is to serve Reception for both units, she feels she 'belongs' to the surgical, not the investigative, team. So she refused to do anything beyond the basics.

She was dressed in claret-coloured kit, 'raspberry scrubs'. (A staff sign said this was required dress code for surgical teams: you get the importance of this now.)

"You need to ask someone in blue" she said grabbing a lady in blue.

"Hello" said the lady in blue

"I'm Esther. How can I help you?"

Esther was straightforward. She told me how long it might take, where to wait (the next room, not hard to point to), to get tea for me but nothing for my friend because Esther was in charge of that.

That's because Esther is a recovery nurse. She is not a receptionist. It is not her job to look after patients' anxious friends and families. She is not accountable for this. But she does it anyway, because it makes a difference to her that people feel comfortable about the procedure they are coming in for and the support around them.

The raspberry-scrubs receptionist could have told me all that, in less sentences than the confusing stuff about her Not Belonging to the other team.

OK, it’s not a big deal. Organising people in reception has low level risk. 
But it’s a neon-highlighter for how a sense of 'Not Belonging' can trounce personal accountability.

In another context, what if Not Belonging, and Not Being Accountable, spreads to an ethical judgement or a safety risk? We’ve seen catastrophic risks in many sectors. 

Belonging leads to commitment; commitment means accountability.

Commitment means doing more than basic tasks. 
Commitment means relationship more than transactions. 
Commitment means looking at consequences of actions. 
Commitment means connecting up with other teams.

Commitment means being willing to go further, accepting accountability for follow-through.

But it all begins with Belonging.

"We're not them, they're different, we're separate" sums up why organisations need a clear sense of belonging.

Most organisations are complex, many-layered, a mix of mergers, acquisitions and sub-contracting, old and new departments, specialist teams.

In the minefield of belonging to different territory, the lines of accountability can get mangled.

Each break in belonging is a potential breakdown of accountability, or failure-point for ethics, safety and strategy.

Wherever you fit in, you're still part of the same goals. Your team, and its particular specialism, interconnects with others. ‘We're’ all 'Us'.

And that means having a sense of belonging, a shared ethos on which to base commitment, and clear accountability to uphold it.

Show everybody in the organisation how it all connects, the principles that bind all its communities into one, as well as the particular focus of each team.

In a complex organisation like a hospital, it is interdependence not independence that makes it all work.

In this way, belonging brings the cohesion to achieve effectiveness as well as efficiency.

I asked Esther if it was a good hospital to work in. She gave answered firmly:

"It is. But do not look at these new buildings and say it is a good hospital.

Look at the work, look at the people doing the work. Look at how they work with each other.

Then you’ll see: is it a good hospital?

It is a good hospital. But that doesn't mean that everybody in it is good."

She’s right, and about a lot more than hospitals.

Do your teams feel they belong to the same organisation?
Do your people share accountability?

Talk to us about how to create a sense of Belonging.

isabel@belongingspace.com

www.belongingspace.com

Twitter @IsabelBelonging

Twitter @BelongingSpace

Can Credit Unions* restore faith in the ethical standards of financial institutions? (*Now with Royal approval)

The Duchess of Cornwall gave her enthusiastic support this week to the work of Credit Unions and their role in providing financial services for the most vulnerable.

Thursday was International Day of Credit Unions, with activities across many countries, to recognise the achievements of this distinct kind of institution.

Belonging is at the heart of Credit Unions: customers belong as members and investors, they share ownership and benefits of the fund, as well as a voice in the decisions around it. They are mutually-owned, ethically-run, and locally-based.

In contrast with the recent scandals around PayDay loans used by the most financially and socially vulnerable to tide them over week-on-week. With compound interest of up to 4,000% this left people with impossible debts.

Ethics - and commercial sustainability - have no place in this practice. Under pressure from public and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Wonga recently wrote off £220m of debts for 330,000 customers. 

The Credit Unions show us a different model: one in which ethics, commerce and financial services are easy partners.

Shared ownership means shared accountability, creating a powerful sense of belonging. 

Purpose is twinned with ethos, giving people principles to believe in and a reason to commit.

Belonging is not just about what you are doing, or how much money you are making: but who you are serving, and why.

Mutual support, strong principles, sharing, exchange and interdependence are all features of this kind of belonging.

Ethics benefits too. When people feel they belong to something they commit more firmly to its principles.

When people belong they do the right thing because they want to, not just because it says so in the rules.

The theme of this year's ICU Day is "Local Service. Global Good". The World Council of Credit Unions says this “emphasizes credit unions' positive impact in their communities and around the world” 

In the UK there are 524 Credit Unions with £1.1bn worth of assets and almost 1.5 million members, of which the Duchess of Cornwall herself is one.  

The Duchess said: “Credit Unions serve people, not profit” and could be “a real force for change in the financial landscape”.

They are growing in popularity in the UK, though just 2% of population are members. Although returns on savings are low, the appeal is in mutual support, with members borrowing and lending through the fund. Gateway Credit Union in South Wales reports significant growth.

In the US, Credit Unions are used by 46% of adult population with strong regional brands.

Mazuma Credit Union, based in Kansas City, exudes the power of belonging. Respected for its great work with the communities it serves as well as a great culture for the people who work within it, it has achieved consistent growth and stability through the recession.

Public faith in financial institutions crashed after a host of ethical disasters. Even the Co-op, the paragon of ‘good business’, is sullied by the scandals around the previous CEO and revelations about failings in Governance.

Are the major financial institutions are too big to be held accountable?

Can Credit Unions set high standards of ethics, and help restore confidence in finance houses?

Mark Lyonette, chief executive of the Association of British Credit Unions Limited says “Credit unions are a very good way of keeping banking in check.”

The unique ethos and structure of credit Unions must be welcome to the FCA. In its earnest efforts to improve standards of ethical conduct in financial sectors it stresses

“Treating customers fairly remains central to our expectations of firms’ conduct, that firms put the well-being of customers at the heart of how they run their businesses.”

Let's hope that the ethics of Credit Unions, and the spirit of belonging, can imbue shared accountability across the financial sector.

We surely need it.

Do your customers, employees and investors all feel they belong to your organisation?
Does everyone in your business uphold its ethics?

Talk to us about how to create a sense of Belonging.

isabel@belongingspace.com

www.belongingspace.com

twitter@IsabelBelonging