Bootstrapping Ethics E-Book

Rupert Evill

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 270

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Practical, cost-effective tools for personal and organizational risk mitigation In Bootstrapping Ethics: Integrity Risk Management for Real-World Application, accomplished fraud investigator and risk advisor Rupert Evill delivers a smart, simple, and hands-on guide to managing risk and ethics in your organization. You'll learn to protect yourself, your organization, and your stakeholders from regulatory and other risks with frontline-tested strategies and frameworks designed to achieve both quick wins and long-term risk mitigation. In the book, the author shows you how to create tangible economic returns by reducing organizational exposure to common--and not-so-common--risks by promoting the right values, managing conflict, prioritizing the communities you serve, and preventing discrimination and harassment against your employees. You'll also: * Learn to manage external stakeholders and their expectations * Keep your risk mitigation strategies cost-effective and straightforward so you can scale them throughout your organization * Get on top of your diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and make sure they're getting results A can't-miss resource for purpose-driven changemakers looking to maximize their impact at the organizations they serve and in the world, Bootstrapping Ethics is also the tactical and practical antidote to the seemingly endless stream of new regulations and oversight facing many modern firms.

Leseprobe

BOOTSTRAPPING ETHICS

INTEGRITY RISK MANAGEMENT FOR REAL-WORLD APPLICATION

RUPERT EVILL

This edition first published 2023© 2023 by Rupert Evill.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781119874904 (Hardback)ISBN 9781119874928 (ePDF)ISBN 9781119874911 (ePub)

Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © Jakub Krechowicz/Shutterstock

PREFACE

I spent most of my life in the shadows. In 2015, when I met my wife, she did her background check on me and became very concerned. I had no (public) profile, and many questions followed. I'd spent my career in the grey world of risk. I'd been a counter-terrorism analyst (much less glamorous than it sounds), an investigator, an intelligence gatherer, a political risk wonk, a crisis responder, a behavioural analyst, and an integrity risk advisor. I travelled this path by volunteering for every exciting project, job, and opportunity – by taking risks. I am and was happy being the clueless newbie learning from masters. I've been blessed with mentors like Dr Cliff Lansley and Dane Chamorro, who taught me the arts of deception detection and tradecraft. I've also learned from dozens of genius colleagues and clients – too many to mention; the people I still speak to regularly.

In retrospect, and I take no credit for planning this, the path gives me a rounded understanding of risk. Terrorists, corrupt politicians, fraudsters, hackers, harassers, and general baddies are not that different. They're humans; we need to know how the motives, means, and methods differ. Integrity risks – by which I mean most things that cause scandals – are a further unifier. All the baddies want money (or power). Whether you're smuggling ivory, building bombs, stealing state secrets, or ripping off your employer, if we're managing integrity risks, we reduce your chances of success.

I don't see integrity risks as figures – I am numerically useless. I see how caustic and vicious this corruption and abuse of power are. These risks gravely threaten our planet, wildlife, human existence, and hope. If we don't take them seriously, we're in trouble. We do our bit if you and I cut off the funding, increase accountability, and respond honestly to risk. The small bribe you pay isn't a drop in the ocean; as Rumi said, “You are the ocean in a drop.”

In 2019, I started Ethics Insight. I was woefully unprepared to be a business owner. I made many mistakes, especially around marketing and sales – two areas I'd barely had to contend with previously. I was bewildered by the options – channels, funnels, adverts, email campaigns, cold leads, warm leads, it was all gibberish. It was a wonderful lesson. Risk had become implicit knowledge to me, just as marketing know-how was for all the people I read and spoke to. I realised why most people didn't understand what I did – I was speaking gibberish.

The pandemic necessitated a massive transformation as my traditional investigative work (and behavioural analysis training gigs) disappeared – 51 investigations in 2019 became three in 2020. A good friend (James Ritchie) told me as I prevaricated about entering the LinkedIn world of self-promotion, public speaking, and authoring, “Get over yourself.” So I did. I used my followers and connections as a laboratory – assessing which risk simplification ideas worked (or not). I learned that if risk is ever to be relevant, it must start with more personal and human constructs (our values, ethics, and beliefs).

As I found my voice, the publisher Wiley found me. They asked me to write a book making risk relevant to you, a broader audience. We all make risk-based decisions daily. We all face integrity and ethical challenges. If you'd like to improve, I hope this book will help you.

I can't and won't cover every facet of risk. You will be disappointed if you're looking for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risk coverage. Corruption, dishonesty (inauthenticity, if I'm being kind), and abuse of power facilitate most ills ESG is concerned with, but I think ESG in its current form is useless. Not the concept, but the metric-driven performative crap peddled by charlatan advisors and cynical institutions. No one person can cogently explain plastic effluents, noise pollution, indigenous land rights, board composition, reporting best practice and sanctions. Again, I focus on integrity risk as it's the currency in which most organisational ills are transacted. My focus is on the root causes of rot, not treating every risk malaise.

This book will borrow statistics and survey data here and there, but, for better or worse, I based it on my experiences managing thousands of projects in more than 50 countries. I look for patterns, overlap, and consistency. Clarity. Enough gibberish, I hope!

Endnotes

1

.   Donald R. Cressey,

Other People's Money

(Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1973), p. 30.

2

.   

https://www.acfe.com/fraud-resources

1WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

If you run an image search for “organisational values wordcloud”, you will see similar words. I do this periodically to see what's changed; very little usually. Integrity, ethics, and innovation – or variations thereof – will typically be in most clouds, as will respect, excellence, and inclusion. The similarity in phrasing hollows out the words, leaving them more performative than purpose. I call bullshit, or “Purpass” (“Purparse” for us Brits), the term I coined to denote fake corporate purpose.

Another internet search for average employee satisfaction will produce results that generally herald an engagement rate above 50% as meriting praise. Break out the bunting; only half our employees care. I appreciate I'm taking a leap of logic and faith here, but if significant portions of our workforce are not engaged, they're probably not on board with the mission and values mantra. Fixing this disjoint between what your organisation says and what people feel it does is the first step to effective risk and compliance management.

If you'd told me that five years ago, I'd probably have said, “Hmm, interesting”, which is my native British for, “Rubbish, not interesting.” I used to be quite sceptical about values, missions, and visions. Too many brand refreshes, replete with swooshes, fonts, and colours, chosen by people in functions that never saw operational realities, made me feel it was all rather cosmetic. Then I got out into the world of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Talking to people and getting their input is easier when you're smaller. A friend who started a now-booming compliance business providing reporting lines described how his organisation had created their values: they'd asked people! Revelatory.

It's pretty easy to find a list of values, and asking people to vote for their favourites (top 5, for example), takes no time. But are the values all a bit the same? Yes, they are. To illustrate my cynicism, here is a Corporate Values Bingo game (Figure 1.1).

Many of these words have become meaningless and patronising. Are you saying to people, “You're not welcome unless you are…” or saying we ascribe to grand pronouncements without any roadmap to explain how? Is it any wonder so many employees are disengaged?

Figure 1.1 Corporate Values Bingo.

You must demonstrate how you want things done; this should not be a FIFO approach (fit in or F-off). It is more akin to house rules. Are you a shoes on inside, or shoes left at the door kind of organisation? I've lived in Asia most of my working life, and if I had issues with shoes off at the door, I'd not have had much of a social life. It is okay to explain how you want things to be done broadly.

Depending on your organisational size, you may then be able to come together physically or virtually to start that discussion. If you're concerned that stronger personalities – or those in positions of authority – might dominate or stifle the voices of others, good, you should be. Technology can be a democratiser here, even in person. For example, suppose you're trying to compile a list of words that might describe how you behave as an organisation. In that case, you can ask people to group them into overlapping or similar concepts. Voting integrity, ethics, respect, transparency, honesty, and honour into a distinct bucket will make the next step easier.

At this stage, however, the words are still meaningless. What do these words mean in action? You can ask people to create “doing” sentences. The bucket above might become, “We do the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Is that integrity or ethics? Yes. Is it honest? Yes. Is it respect or transparency? Maybe, maybe not. These finer points will stimulate discussion, forcing you all to define actions rather than demonstrate respectful or transparent behaviour. Or perhaps you'll decide transparency isn't your schtick, as might be sensible in some professions where discretion is the currency of credibility.

If you hit an impasse, vote or shelve that topic and move on to the next bucket. After a while, the values start to sort themselves, or more precisely, the lived definition and actions associated with them. Every organisation is seeking to achieve something. Align the values to that. If you're in retail, I'd imagine a customer focus might be primary, whereas, for logistics, it'll be speed and security.

If you're now thinking, “we already have values”, good, check back in with your people to see if they all (still) resonate. Your how and what are not immutable and unchangeable. As societal and political progress, albeit often glacial, moves and changes opinions and challenges perspectives, so should your organisational purpose. You will also need to make sure your ideas translate across cultures. The head of compliance for a large manufacturing company recently told me he had sent a survey about diversity, equity. and inclusion to colleagues in China. They had replied, “This is Western ideals, not relevant here.” The Singaporean team at a large UK-listed financial institution also told me that my referencing #MeToo in a training session about ethics was “A Western topic that we don't recognise.”

In both instances, and after some digging, the issues were more to do with the medium than the message.

Ideas need to be localised. Every culture I have experienced has its own stories, belief systems, and values. These ethical frameworks overlap more than they ever contradict. If a fan of the Greek and Roman Stoics read Confucianist or Daoist texts, they'd likely find more that complements than contradicts. What went wrong in the situations above? Do Chinese people not care about inclusion? Are women free of harassment in Singapore? No.

My friend and I had not adapted the message for the local audience. Adapting is as much about finding the right words as allowing people agency. When I asked the Singaporean team what would work better than #MeToo, they replied, “Fairness.” Fair enough!

I can already feel some of you squirming. You may be thinking of a decentralised mess where we mangle every message into something locally acceptable, thereby losing meaning or, worse, conflicting with the intention. Moral relativists will point out that we do not understand ethics similarly. You are right, but what's the alternative, misfiring missives with oblique aspirational words greeted with cynicism and rolled eyes?

Having tried to arrive at communal values in the most hostile environments – parents to two terrors – I can assure you it is possible. I've even included how we did it here (Figure 1.2).

We started with a long list of values (the internet is full of such lists). Each member of the family got to choose the five that resonated most. We whittled those choices down to seven words we wanted to turn into sentences. Yes, this involved compromise, but if you allow people to pick five, most of us will cede a couple without too much drama. Then came the significant bit, turning somewhat abstract words that sounded pretentious into lived action, as illustrated by one of the values in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.2 Possible family values.

We wanted to use the active (not passive) voice to give positive meaning and personal ownership. This process stimulated debate and discussion about how we wished to conduct ourselves collectively and individually (and hold each other accountable). Crucially, this was a democratic process. The parents did not get a more significant vote, and the kids hold us accountable (repeatedly!) when our behaviours fall short.