Should Ethics & Compliance be sexy?💜

In a world where we want to impact people to do the right thing and make a difference, let’s take a direct and honest look at our Ethics & Compliance communication and material. Do we enable ourselves to reach our higher mission? Do employees read us? How does our Network of Ethics & Compliance Correspondent react when we reach out to them so that they help us roll out initiatives? Are we really connecting with our audience?

“It’s a serious topic, not a fun topic!”

Ok, you may tell me: Pauline, this is not fun, we are talking about corruption, human rights, antitrust, trouble, prison, investigations and so on. It’s serious stuff! Why on earth would you want this to be sexy?

Of course, it is serious stuff. But a serious topic does not mean we need to be boring and grim when we talk about it, especially when the name of the game is to make people do something: the right thing!

“Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching” (Aldo Leopold). How do we enable our people to get there?

Why would we want Ethics & Compliance to be "sexy"?

If our message is not heard, or not read, then we might as well do something else with our precious time.

Because we do want people to read what we write, hear what we say, integrate our messages and to do so to such an extent that, when confronted with challenging situations in their job lives, they know how to react and lead by example.

While having a mandatory training session gives you a captive audience, it does not automatically captivate your audience! We can get the body and the time, but the brain and the attention, we need to earn, if we want to impact.

We are competing with a million of very swift, very catchy, colorful and fast moving messages that fuel people’s brains every day. Our attention span as humans seem to be reducing as fast as the arctic ice caps.

If we want to impact behavior as Ethics & Compliance professionals, we need to catch this scarce attention.

The Ethics & Compliance message is actually extremely inspiring. In my career, I have had so many interviews with potential employees who were driven and attracted by the purpose of enabling organizations to fight corruption and make the world a better place. We need to convey this higher purpose in the right way as it does mean something to people and to the world. There is so much potential for powerful and impacting communication.

“And yet, [as Julian Treasure puts it in his Ted Talk] many people have the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them. And why is that? How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?” (Get inspired and train on your voice by listening to Julian Treasure's TED Talk: How to Speak so That People Want to Listen).

Let’s explore this together.

Who are we targeting with our Ethics & Compliance "sexyness"?

When asked about the best communication advice ever received in the Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast, Jennifer Aaker states without a doubt that one needs to “know [their] content, audience and space in between” (Jennifer Aaker in the podcast - Make ’Em Laugh: How Humor Can Be the Secret Weapon in Your Communication - Think Fast, Talk Smart, a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business and hosted by Lecturer Matt Abrahams).

If we want to communicate with impact, we need a plan: the first step is to identify our audiences, as our messages will be slightly different depending on our target, even though based on the same backbone. A communication plan allows us to organize and allocate our resources wisely and in a structured and targeted manner.

That takes us to our Ethics & Compliance Governance. Let’s list who we work with, what they need to know and to remember and in what way we want to impact their behavior:

• Our Ethics & Compliance Committee, Executive Committee etc.

They oversee the progress of our Ethics & Compliance initiatives. They need the proper visibility on risks and exposure as well as on the bird eye view on the progress of our Ethics & Compliance program.

We will want to communicate to them with data, trends and high level information. As Olen Klaff states in Pitch Anything, your message to your audience has a few seconds to be categorized as follows:

• “If it’s not dangerous, ignore it.
• If it’s not new and exciting, ignore it.
• If it is new, summarize it as quickly as possible—and forget about the details.”

Olen Klaff summarizes: “unless your message is presented in such a way that the crocodile brain views it to be new and exciting—it is going to be ignored”. 

I propose we all take a few seconds to reflect on how many times it happened that our Committee members had their noses down on their phones while we were presenting. How can we be slightly disruptive, new and exciting so that we get their attention back?

Because their mission is of the greatest importance: we do need them to stand up and deliver a strong tone at the top message in the organization and lead by example.

• Our Network of Ethics & Compliance Correspondents

Our Network is key to rolling out our Ethics & Compliance initiatives across all our Business Units. We want to make sure we have a clear view at all times of all the humans within the network, who is where, and where they stand on the various initiatives rolled out. 

If we are lucky enough to have full time Ethics & Compliance correspondents in our Network, we want them to be the relay of our key messages, and be as impactful as we are! Let’s make the playbook as easy as possible for them.

If they have 20 other topics on their desks, we want to make it extremely easy for them so that it is nothing but a pleasure to be the representative of Ethics & Compliance Initiatives within their Business Units.

• The extended network of team members who help us run our Ethics & Compliance program 

It takes a village to roll out Ethics & Compliance Initiatives in an organization, and we need to engage all the other teams, from finance to internal control and HR in a very compelling way so that they help out. We need these teams to relay key messages and support us with our initiatives, while we make it as easy as possible for them.

• All the employees in our organization

We need them to remember the most important messages and do the right thing, and know when and where to ask for help. We want employees to feel that they are supported and that they can report their concerns safely.

This is just a few examples, you can of course go as granular as you please. Now that we have listed our audiences and how we want to impact them, let’s focus on how we can make our message (more) sexy.

Let's make our Ethics & Compliance messaging (more) SEXY

By SEXY, we mean:

• Sincere
• Easy
• Xenacious
• Yes! (there are not enough adjectives that start with a Y)

Sincere

Being genuine and sincere is key to building trust, and we absolutely need trust to convey messages that relate to integrity. We also need people to trust our organization and the fact that they are supported and enabled to do the right thing.

On this, to really connect with your audience and be remembered, research shows that humor will get you a long way: “using humor not only can make our content more engaging in the moment, but it also makes it more memorable after the fact” (Naomi Bagdonas in the podcast - Make ’Em Laugh: How Humor Can Be the Secret Weapon in Your Communication - Think Fast, Talk Smart, a podcast produced by Stanford Graduate School of Business and hosted by Lecturer Matt Abrahams). Listen to this podcast to get inspired!

A beautiful way to be sincere is to show vulnerability. Ask your audience for feedback: they will not only feel heard, but most importantly you will get the golden nuggets on how to improve.

Easy

We need to make everything as easy as possible for people to be able to understand, integrate the messages and help out.

We are competing for attention with content that is way cooler than our Ethics & Compliance productions. We need to step it up, use engaging formats, and ensure people actually click on what we produce and enjoy what they see there. This does not need to be a six figure budget Hollywood production, there are many cheap ways to create compelling visuals. Maybe partner with your Internal Communications department to get nice ideas and synergies?

We also need to be easy in how we speak, not only replace legalese with clarity and words that can be understood by everyone, but also make meaningful and catchy statements.

We need to think of how we engage with our helping crowd, our champions, our correspondents: are we making it easy for them to help us? The more we make it easy for them to stay on track and have transparency, the more help we will receive. The better it will feel for them to help, the more they will help out. 

Xenacious

This means being filled with a yearning for change. It means challenging the status quo, wanting to do better every single day.

Ethics & Compliance can sometimes feel like this:

 And yet, it is our relentless and energetic pursuit of this higher purpose that will make a difference! How can we keep being energized and vibrant while bringing to life this higher purpose that can unite a whole organization, attract talent and clients? If you are not excited about it, who will be?

How can you reconnect with this excitement so that you can convey it to your Committee, Network and broader organization? As Kristy Grant-Hart explains it in her inspiring book How to be a Wildly Effective Compliance Officer, we are all into the business of selling Ethics & Compliance, and, if we close our eyes and imagine how great our program would be if we had all the resources and support we needed, we can reconnect with this original excitement and sell what we do successfully.

Yes!

Yes is the answer! It represents your open mind, positive attitude and communication. Generally, this relates to the psychology of being more positive, and how this can in turn impact your own way of thinking and behavior, enabling you to positively impact others around you. Listen to this sharp TED Talk by Alison Ledgerwood, A simple trick to improve positive thinking to get inspired.

I hope this Friday Mood Post could convince you to infuse a bit of sexyness and positive energy into your Ethics & Compliance Program.

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