Indian Social Values – Root of Corruption

Page three newspapers are full of celebrities’ rave parties, fist fights, sex scandals, botox treatments, etceteras. The not so rich idealize these celebrities and mimic all, to be the in-crowd. With these social values, can Indian’s consider it cool to be good?

The west puts India on the pulpit for its values. From Beatles to Julia Roberts, western celebrities talk about Indian culture of prayers, the land of discovering one’s spirit and sense of being. When majority of the middle class Indians themselves are lost, the crown of leader of spiritual world appears  somewhat misplaced. Indians in the present world, from birth, get to understand that all human emotions come at a price. This may sound as a harsh statement, but is reality. Let us walk through the different phases of life of a middle class Indian to discover the spiritual compromises they make.

1. Indian Childhood

India post-independence from a land of leaders propagating good values  has turned into a land people indulging in  unscrupulous behavior in the name of social values. It starts with birth. From the 1960′s the desire to have a son grew among parents. Educated parents get female fetus aborted  since the son has more value in the marriage market. The sex ratio is 109.4 males to 100 females in 2011. According to reports nearly 50,000 female fetus are aborted every month.

The reason for abortions is financial. According to the Indian system, a girl’s father in arranged marriages pays dowry for getting a husband for his daughter. Secondly, in the conservative families daughters aren’t allowed to work. Hence, the cost of raising a daughter, educating her, is lost while a son earns back the money for parents from working and getting a dowry. Therefore, sons get a better treatment from parents from birth. From food, clothes, education and hobbies the girl is forced to sacrifice for the brother. Basically, from the day a child is conceived, Indian parents put a value on the child. There is a profit and loss motive in child upbringing.

With these values apparent in the household from childhood, is it surprising that Indians ethical values are confused? Can a child raised on the basis of returns s/he will bring to the parents on becoming an adult, consider emotions and principles above money? Are parents raising kids or cattle for sale?

2. Indian Youth

Indian parents tom-tom about their love for their children and their dedication to keep the children with them. They look down on their western counterparts, who let the kids leave home between the age of 16-20 years to live on their own. In India, 30 year old unmarried sons and daughters can also be found living with their parents. It arises from an attempt to control who the youngster marries, specially for sons, so that a big fat dowry can be earned.

In respect to daughters, it is a need to keep their image unsullied. A daughter having an affair is a no-no among conservative families. Good girls don’t have relationship with boys. While the boys can have relationships with girls, and any girl who has a sexual relationship with a boy is of loose moral character. It it surprising that with this culture, Indian youth does not have normal relationships with the opposite gender.

India is the 4th most unsafe place in the world. Eve teasing or sexual harassment is rampant and young Indian women endure comments from men even when walking to office at 9 a.m. According to a survey of developing nations, Indian men are the most sexually violent, with 24% having committed a sexual crime. Another survey states 65% men believe sometimes a women deserves to be beaten. With these results and mindset, can one ensure gender equality at work?

An Indian’s professional mentor/buddy in the first job is the person who teaches them to fudge the reimbursement bills of their salary. For instance, employees are entitled to medical reimbursements. The friendly mentor will share information of a medical store from where fraudulent medical bills can be obtained by giving a cut.

After being raised in this culture, can Indian youth have independent thinking, proper adult relationships and professional values? Most lip sync their parents’ desires for them, rather than discovering and understanding their own being. Abnormal behavior – living with one’s parents in adulthood, harassing opposite gender – is socially considered normal. Normal behavior of having adult relationships, independent living and maintaining professional ethics, may make the youth a social outcast. After being raised in this social climate, can Indian youth make India the next superpower?

3. Indian Marriage

The biggest trade in India, is of arranged marriages. Marriages aren’t made in heaven, they are negotiated for the best deal. The sons are put up for sale and the daughters’ fathers attempts to purchase the best available husband for her, according to their financial position.

If one sees it from an economic angle, the husband to provide for the wife lifelong, takes upfront payment from his wife’s father. Looking from another angle, the woman gets a man to have sex with her for life after being paid by her father. Prostitution is illegal in India, and prostitutes are looked down upon. But sale and purchase of husband and wife is a socially accepted norm.

In rural areas, the situation is worse. If a couple belonging to different castes falls in love, the male members of the girl’s family do honor killing, they kill the couple. It is a crime to fall in love, and humiliating for the parents. From all this one can conclude that Indian rational of honor, esteem and self-respect is quite contrary to human race.

Even divorce involves social stigma. In reality, 90% of urban husbands have had extra marital affairs. Most of the urban wives are educated but don’t leave their marriages even after being aware of the affair, as their standard of living will become lower. India has one of the lowest divorce rates with just one in a hundred marriages collapsing. There are just around 10,000 or so divorce cases filed each year. Despite the fact that there were 8391 dowry deaths in 2010 and 90,000 cases of torture and cruelty towards women by their husbands. This is when most women don’t report to police due to sense of social shame. Aren’t the numbers ironical. Abusing women is considered a social privilege of the Indian male. Moreover, educated women prefer to take abuse rather than stand on their own two feet and earn their living.

Closing Thoughts

Can Indian marriages teach valuing human emotions when they are nothing more than a financial transaction? After parent-child relationship, the second most precious relationship is of husband-wife. In India, both have monetary values attached to it. When critical relationships are not based on ethics, what is the probability of the society respecting professional ethics?

Indian ideas of honor, respect, ethics and principles are bunkum. A thief steals a women’s purse, he is a criminal. A  husband steals his wife’s dignity and her father’s retirement saving, he is respectable. It is a case of sacrificing rational thinking to camouflage social ills.

Last week, the government issued a “White paper on black money”. The paper describes ways and methods to curb corruption and reduce black money. However, with this social environment, the best efforts are likely to fail. Can an average Indian be considered as having a fully developed “Conscience”? Anywhere close to spiritual awakening? What do you think?

References:

1. Disappearing Daughters: Women pregnant with Girls pressured into abortion
2. Divorce Rate High Among Indian Techies
3. Dowry murders in India result in few convictions
4. Indian men most sexually violent, says survey of six developing nations
5. International Center for Research on Women

Risks of Restrictive Mindsets of Indian Gen X Leaders

The baton of leadership is passing to Gen X leaders from baby boomers. In the flat world leadership challenges have multiplied. In the Indian context, Gen X leaders have seen India as a poor country in their childhood, a closed economy in their youth and a global powerhouse from late 30′s. Now in their 40′s they have to take over the leadership in organizations or as entrepreneurs. Will they be able to effectively transition into leadership roles or will they be inhibited by their thinking? Gen X leadership is one critical factor that can make or break India’s progress into joining the big league countries. Let us contemplate the leadership skills and attributes that Indian Gen X leaders need to address to succeed.

1. Entrepreneurship

In pre-independence  India, Tatas and Birlas made their mark. Then Dhirubhai Amabani changed Indian mindsets about business. Narayana Murti and Sunil Bharti Mittal from 1990′s showed the way to Indians to lead in new technology areas. However, post it, their have no big movers and shakers who have held the flag of Indian entrepreneurship high. Unlike the west, there are no Mark Zuckerberg’s in India.

Recently, Ashok Soota, Phaneesh Murthy and T.V.Mohandas Pai, all from information technology industry were in the news for their entrepreneurial spirit. Phaneesh Murthy, CEO if iGate, went through a career disaster a few years back due to a sexual harassment case at Infosys. He came back stronger, formed his own company and acquired Patni last year. Patni was where Narayana Murthi’s story started. Ashok Soota started Mindtree, sold it to make a huge profit, and has started Happiest Minds. Latest entrant, Mohandas Pai  has become the chief architect of a multi-discipline university cluster being planned by Dr Ranjan Pai of Manipal Education & Medical Group (MEMG) and opened an investment fund for entrepreneurs.

However, none of these path breakers are from Gen X, they are all older generations. Big family business names are searching for CEOs to run separate businesses for them, however, there is limited entrepreneurial talent in India. Does Gen X lack entrepreneurial spirit?

2. Strategic Thinking

While the west celebrates the success of college dropouts- Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Indians remain obsessed with qualifications. From school to college, education is all about how well a student can memorize and reproduce a teacher’s lectures. Critical and independent thinking isn’t encouraged in Indian education systems or social structures. A youngster is considered well-behaved when s/he accepts elders and seniors instructions unquestionably. Gen X from childhood haven’t learnt to disagree without being disagreeable. Hence, as leaders they lack strategic and innovative thinking skills.

This is apparent that Indian banking system is suffering due to requests of corporate debt restructuring (CDR). In this year, the CDR amount is nearly Rs 2 lakh crore (USD 36,722 million) . Key reasons being management incompetence and diversion of funds. This situation is when Indian economy is having a robust growth and was not significantly impacted by financial crises. The Indian CXOs are inexperienced in strategically managing diverse variables in a dynamic global environment. Hence, Indian Gen X leaders are losing out. Indian business houses are looking at expats and NRIs for future business expansions. Specially, since some are venturing into global markets and setting operations in other countries.

3. Social Conditioning

Gen X was raised by parents who were born in pre-independence era. Most urban middle class families were so conservative, that Gen X wasn’t even allowed to date or chose marriage partners themselves. Most lived with their parents, got married and continued to live in joint families. Women didn’t work and were the perfect house wives. Interactions from people across the globe were limited. There were a number of restrictions on socializing with people of different religions, castes and races. Now times have drastically changed.

Gen Y is raised on a staple diet of MTV, club hopping and speed dating. There is hardly any difference between youth of west and India. In most organizations, nearly 60% of the workforce consists of Gen Y. Around 20-30% employees are women. Significant amount of revenue comes from exports, hence dealing with international customers and cultures is a mandatory skill.

In such a scenario, Gen X leaders face challenges in people management.  The war for talent is huge. Managing diversity is critical for success. From an autocratic work culture, organizations are shifting to consultative cultures. Indian managers have recently started focusing on building organization cultures. Most have limited experience in managing people across different cultures.

Multinationals setting operations in India have found this social behavior of Indian managers counter productive. It hinders global cultural integration, team building and smooth communication. Sometimes the personal bias can create huge problems. Hence, most of the multinationals look for Indians with international work experience for critical CXO positions.  Here, the liberal thinkers in Indian Gen X group have made great strides.

4. Value System

Indian society holds family dearest. The family comes first even at the expense of society, and most Indians do not feel a responsibility for betterment of society. For instance, in US family and society hold equal importance, and most Americans voluntarily contribute towards social projects. Activism is high,and they hold government accountable and themselves responsible for improving society. Indian citizens on the other hand can be found lamenting about high corruption, poverty, lack of education, high crime rates, poor infrastructure etc. However, the apathy level is so high that they never try to find solutions, be responsible and take charge.

Some business houses have got inspired by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s pledge to donate their wealth. A few have started non-profit organizations, such as Premji, to contribute to the society. The business groups of CII, Chamber of Commerce, AIMA etc. have started lobbying with government to focus on growth. Nandan Nilekani joined government to run the UIDAI project. A few ex-CXOs have started consulting organizations to deal with social causes, lobby with government and bring change.

Gen X leaders have to carry this torch further. Singing unending woes and blaming the government isn’t a solution. They have to focus on corporate social responsibility and practice compassionate capitalism.

5. Running Large Operations

Indian managers are renowned for managing in chaos. Their jugado (Mr. Fix-it) skills are tremendous. However, that itself has restricted them from learning the advantages of well-defined processes, systems and procedures.

Gen X started working in organizations where the offices had 100-200 staff. Nearly everyone was a big fish in a small pond. An organization with 10,000 employees or Rs 500 crore (USD 91 million) turnover was considered big in India. Very few Gen X managers have worked in global organizations with billion dollar profit margins or over 100 thousand employees. Hence, most don’t understand the complexity of working in or running large scale operations in a cross cultural environment.

There are hardly any truly Indian multinational organizations, that have operations in more than 10 countries. Hence, the Gen X leaders fail to comprehend strategic and operational opportunities and risks that western multinational organizations are used to. The difference is so significant that Reliance Industries, a company of Ambani, has enjoyed high market capitalization for over a decade. But it is only half of Facebook 100 billion dollar value. Reliance Infocom and Reliance Retail both suffered hiccups in running operations for the first few years and customer service was pathetic. It took both companies nearly five years to straighten out operations despite there being no dearth of funds.

For Indian organization to grow to the next level, it needs leaders who can manage large-scale operations. Are Gen X leaders up to the task?

Closing Thoughts

Indian Gen X grew up in a social environment where failure was ridiculed, dissenting views were laughed at and independent thinkers stigmatized. Not surprisingly, majority of the Gen X is scared of trying new things and failing. Though failure is the best teacher, and it is not easy to learn when one is successful. The paradox is that all the requirements of a successful Gen X leader are completely opposite to the values they were raised with. The fastest learners and adapters will succeed in this battle and they will lead India to the next level of growth. The point to ponder on is, whether India is in short supply of Gen X leaders with these attributes? If yes, will India be able to be among the top 3 countries in the next decade?

References:

1. Ashok Soota – PromoterHappiest Minds
2. Mohandas Pai’s Business Plans

Diversity Management Risks in Global Organizations

Barack Obama in his autobiography “Dreams of My Father” reflects  “where do I belong?”. Being a child of parents of different races and religions, he spent a childhood searching his identity. Bill Clinton in his autobiography “My Life” discusses a white child’s perspective on segregation of schools in America in 1950s. Both men grew up without their real fathers presence; Obama’s lived in Kenya and Clinton’s lost his real father before birth in a car accident. Their step-fathers didn’t play an important role in building their characters, both attribute their mothers for raising and guiding them.  The personalities reflected in the books are different. Obama comes across as an intellectual and philosophical man, Clinton appears to be a people person and detail oriented. However, Americans and worldwide public had remarkably different viewpoints just because of the color of the skin.

Moreover, their religious faith did swing some votes in their favor. Barack Obama’s credibility is still questioned by opponents by stating that his grandfather was a Muslim, hence Obama cannot be following Christianity. Even in the world super power politics, race and religion play an important role. The more recent case is of Nicky Haley stating she has converted from Sikhism to Christianity. She is an Indian born in US, with the name Nimrata Rhandawa married to Michael Haley. That she felt the need to convert, and was questioned by a Time magazine reporter as to whether she will give a bigger tip to Sikh cab drivers, depicts the hypocrisy of choosing candidates based on performance, ideologies and meritocracy.

Closer home in India, religion still plays a major role in politics. Dynastic politics prevails and even the first family of Indian politics projects belief in Hinduism. It is ironical that the family is secular in religious belief, however, has to present themselves as Hindus for public consumption. As per historical records Indira Gandhi a Kashmiri Brahmin (Hindu) married Feroze Ghandi, a Zoroastrian. To prevail politically, the surname spelling was changed to Gandhi, making it sound similar to Mahatma Gandhi, though there was no family connection. Rumors prevail that Feroze Ghandi by birth was a Muslim. Their first son Rajiv Gandhi, married Antonia Edvige Albina Maino (Sonia Gandhi), an Italian Christian and the second son Sanjay Gandhi married Maneka Anand,a Sikh.  However, the next generation of Gandhi’s – Rahul, Priyanka and Varun - publicly follow Hinduism.

Can’t blame them, because in India religion and region bias are huge. South Indians will view North Indians suspiciously and vis-a-versa. Among South Indians, the Telugu and Tamils will fight, whereas in North India the Punjabis and Jats will battle for superiority. Worse, grouping also  occurs on bases of caste and sub-castes. In such a scenario, with globalization, can organizations really ensure unbiased behavior and decisions on race and religion? Is it possible to wade out prejudices, suspicions and intolerance for a few hours at work, and come home to indulge in the same?

The challenges for organizations are mind-boggling due to technological advancement. As in this wordpress blog where readers from 50 countries visit daily to read posts, in global organizations faith, philosophies, ideologies, race and religion of employees are quite different. Homogeneous behavior cannot be brought about by a code of conduct or compliance team. Meritocracy can win only when it is built into the culture of the organization, else the spirit of the organization will be in tatters due to the dichotomies in employees faiths and beliefs. Hence, let us take a look at diversity management risks in multinational organizations.

1. Regulations of various countries.

Labor laws relating to age, race, religion and gender differ among countries depending on the legal, political and cultural environments. Additionally, in large countries, for instance US or India, they differ state wise and some vary according to industry. Therefore, multinational organizations have to devise policies and procedures on diversity management according to the laws of the country in which head quarters is located, and international operations.  Compliance to various laws and regulations can be a challenging task and head office may not have the full picture.

2. Variance in local cultures

Local cultures impact diversity management initiatives of multinationals. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, women sit separately in a room and do not mix with the men in office. In India, the number of local languages tend to group people of a state together. Hence, the status of embedding diversity management initiatives in head office and regional offices may differ significantly. Cultural integration may become difficult due to behavioral attitudes. For instance, Americans are more outspoken and aggressive in nature, whereas Indians are diffident and respectful. Due to these aspects, global communication and integration plans have to be adopted to local environment.

3. Anti-discrimination protection

The effectiveness of anti-discrimination protection is dependent on enforcing laws and the judicial environment in the country. For example, in US a number of discrimination cases are filed by employees and huge penalties are levied on the organizations. However, in India, though similar laws exist, there is hardly an instance where a case is filed by an employee on the basis of discrimination, as there is minimal possibility of employee winning the case against a large organization. To ensure same level of adherence is maintained at head office and regional offices, diversity management officers need to play a critical role.

 4. Increase in workplace violence

Globally and in India, workplace violence is increasing. Employees report increasing number of cases of bullying, harassment, sexual harassment and physical threats in various surveys. Here again, a group or individual  belonging to a specific race or religion may get mobbed by the majority, depending on the political climate in the country. Hence, the challenge for multinationals again is that similar laws may not exist in other countries. For example, India still doesn’t have an act passed on sexual harassment in workplace, though the bill has been pending in the parliament for sometime. Therefore, awareness levels of these issues differs in various countries. Multinationals, to bring uniformity need to have extensive training in regional offices and subsidiaries.

5. Mergers and Acquisitions

With the ongoing trend of multinationals acquiring companies in different countries, addressing diversity issues becomes critical. Mergers fail, due to failure in culture alignment and not because of failure in merging financial numbers. Post merger, for cultural integration one of the first things to do is devise a strategy for diversity management and implement the same.

Closing Thoughts

An extremely complex subject that impacts organizations especially those with international operations, at three levels – customers, productivity and staffing. However, it is often ignored by the management and definitely by risk managers and auditors. Very few risk managers do a human resource risk assessment, hence these problems continue to brew within the organization, till the culture becomes toxic or legal cases are filed. Hence, it is a good move to develop global and local diversity management strategies and implement the same. Indian organizations can take a leaf out of US organizations, and start appointing diversity management officers.

References:

Workforce diversity initiatives by US Multinationals in Europe - Mary Lou Egan.. Marc Bendick, Jr.

Retaliation faced by Risk Managers and Auditors in India

Washington Post article “Maryland parks agency demotes auditor after spending questions, sources say” again brought to the forefront the retaliation auditors and risk managers face while doing their job. According to the article – “Abinet Y. Belachew was placed in a staff auditing position and his $124,000 salary was cut by more than $30,000, according to records from the agency after he questioned spending by top agency officials“. This is nothing new, the Ethics Resource Center survey of 2011 of US companies states that – “Almost one-fourth of those reporting bad behavior said they experienced some form of retaliation, up from 15% in 2009 and only 12% in 2007.”

The most surprising bit is, that there are hardly any such cases reported by Indian media. At most, media reports if a bureaucrat is fired or transferred from a critical position after a damaging disclosure of government wrongdoing. In respect to retaliation on risk managers and auditors in private sector, there is no coverage.

One can presume either that there is no retaliation or Indian auditing institutes haven’t lobbied to protect their members from retaliation. Indian institutes, namely, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Institute of Company Secretaries of India, etc. are governed by Ministry of Corporate Affairs. That could be reason for lack of awareness and action in this field. Moreover, India doesn’t have a whistle-blower protection act and a number of activists have been shot dead in broad daylight. Though, the listing agreement has a clause for whistle-blower protection, it is more in name only. Additionally, law and enforcement agencies are not without corruption. Hence, the cumulative affect is that private sector auditors and risk managers are left without recourse when facing retaliation.

1. Nature of Retaliation

Auditors and risk managers in India, therefore, have far tougher choices to make than their counterparts in the Western world. Doing the right thing and reporting against management, can cause more than just a job loss. In India, following methods are employed for retaliation against risk managers, auditors and whistle-blowers. These sometimes continue even after termination of the employee for a number of years :

a) Downgrade or transfer the individual from the position.

b) Isolate the person, turn the team against the person and bosses give threats of job loss.

c) Spread rumors about personal life of the person. For instance – if a person is married they inform the spouse about an affair, or if the person is single, they spread rumors on sex life and sexual orientation. Take photographs in compromising positions to blackmail the individual.

d) Spread rumors in professional circles to destroy the person’s credibility. The person is told that previous employers will be asked to do a negative background verification. After terminating the employee, organizations still do and even inform head hunters not to process the candidates papers.

e) Use detectives to tap phones, including mobile phones;  hack personal systems to monitor correspondence and internet activity. Inform individual’s contacts not to respond to phones and emails, and threaten if they do so.

f) Enter employee homes without authorization, install bugs and cameras to watch personal activities. Even steal items to make employee feel more vulnerable.

h) Pay relatives, friends and neighbors to stalk the person – physically, on phone and internet - to cause a psychological breakdown. The person is isolated and humiliated publicly on every occasion to instill fear in others.

i) Threaten the person with murder and rape to ensure that they do not go to law enforcement agencies or media. Bribe law enforcement agencies, attorneys and media to not accept the complaint and report the same.

j) Ensure all other sources of income are stopped as the person becomes financially liable and cannot fight back.

k) Try and make the person physically sick, by food poisoning and other means. Deny medical aid or ask doctors to provide incorrect medicines for treatment.

l) Lastly, in rare cases the person is murdered.

Considering the risks of retaliation and the unwritten rule that reports should be published according to management directives, auditors and risk managers deal with internal conflict at multiple levels. It is at one level, between doing the right thing and progress within the organization. At another level, it is about passion for auditing and risk management versus fear of endangering career and life. Overall, the choice is between following an ethical path for the benefit of society versus the option of compromising them for self-interest. With the high-level corruption in Indian society, it appears to be losing battle as a lone person battles mighty organizations.

2. Some Suggestions

The choices would be simpler if institutes provided mentoring and support in dealing with such cases. The institutes ensure that all members sign of on a code of ethics; however, do not provide the training and support on dealing with ethical dilemmas and protection against retaliation.  In this aspect, Indian institutes would do well to adopt practices of international institutes.

Moreover, international institutes have a stake in developing these practices in India. Not only Indians are members of the institutes, a number of multinationals operate in India. As multinationals are aware that it is easier to break the law and rules in India, due to high-level corruption and limited education on risk management areas, they are more prone to undertake unethical behavior and accounting practices in Indian and other emerging countries. Indian employees of multinationals are unlikely to whistle-blow on international law enforcement agencies websites as most don’t know where to report and the risks of reporting are high. Without support at local level, it is difficult to report at international level.

Closing Thoughts

In the end, the decision each risk manager and auditor needs to take is based on the reason for joining the profession. In India, chartered accountants earn equivalent to doctors, engineers and MBA’s. If they joined the profession to earn well and climb the corporate ladder, they may willingly compromise ethical standards. On the other hand, if they joined because they were passionate about the subject and wished to make a difference, they may compromise their own self interest for the betterment of society.

Overall, retaliation is tough to deal with and a higher level can make many buckle down in fear. Auditors and risk managers have a lot of power in their hands to ensure good practices are adopted by the corporate world, it is best to use it wisely. People need to be educated that by retaliating against risk managers and auditors, they are playing in the hands of people using unethical practices, thereby risking their own investments and well-being. The institutes should build the public awareness about the same.

References:

1.  Maryland parks agency demotes auditor after spending questions, sources say – Washington Post
2.  Ethics Resource Center 2011 Survey

Recruitment in Dysfunctional Organizations

Six months back you landed your dream job, the pay was great with an incredible job profile and a company brand name to match. Now you are not sure what you have gotten yourself into. You are perpetually asking yourself – should you continue or quit? You are asked to compromise personal values on a daily basis for showing loyalty to your boss and company. The situation that you are in, is not out of the best practices of human resource management or ethical culture, you have joined a dysfunctional organization. Putting it another way, an organization with a deviant corporate culture.

Employees face incredible personal and professional risks on joining an organization with a deviant culture. On the face of it, initially, everything looks unbelievably good. As the layers are peeled off, the employees feel they are in a sinister environment and are swallowed in quicksand. The walls of silence maintained ensure that employees do not discuss these concerns openly and fear of retaliation forces them to comply. Employees deceive themselves into believing that these unethical activities they are doing are just for a short time, and the situation will improve in a short while. A cold hard look is required in such circumstances, to understand the symptoms and take a decision.

The paper “Organi-cultural Deviance: Socialization of Individuals into Deviant Culture”, describes the process of individual indoctrination into the culture. A new employee goes through five stages of socialization into the workplace according to Wanous research. These are:

a) confront the reality of the new job –newcomers adjust their expectations to the reality of the job;

b) achieve role clarity-newcomers learn and negotiate the expectations and requirements of their roles in the organization;

c) locate oneself in the organization-newcomers learn how their work contributes to the work of the organization;

d) assess success-newcomers assess the value of their contributions to the organization; and

e) during the stages of socialization, the individual learns the language of the organization.

The above mentioned process is adopted by employees in a regular organization in the probation period, that varies from 3-6 months in most companies. In a deviant organization culture, the employee starts feeling the social pressure to comply to unethical practices and lose individual identity in this period. The process of indoctrination describes how the individual “self” is socialized into a deviant organization culture. The stages are as follows:

1) Stage I - In normal course of action, an individual has various separate identities, that they maintain to lead a fulfilling life. For instance, the employee has a work identity, a social identity, a family identity etc. In a deviant organization, these identities are slowly stripped away, and the employee is completely dependent on the organization identity. The employee is lured by big rewards to compromise their individual identity for the organization.

Since, the employee is still in probationary period, the fear of job loss makes them succumb to group think. The organization or group attempts to brain wash the individual by giving justification of the behavior for altruistic purposes. For instance, they will ask to humiliate or harass another person or employee, to improve the harassed person’s behavior. The justification given will be that it is for the betterment of the victim, rather than accepting that they are indulging in socially unacceptable behavior. Further on, they are asked to indulge in degrading activity for the sake of fun. In the book “The Wolf of Wall Street” Jordon Belfort describes activities at Stratton. He mentioned that seniors in the company had free for all sex discussion in the morning meetings and to boost morale arranged depraved acts. For example, in one case, they cut hair of female employee with her agreement in the conference room. Women employees especially have a tough time as they are mostly treated as sex objects.

2) Stage II -  In this phase the employee becomes dependent on the organization and the psychological chains tighten. The idea initially sold to the individual is that the group has an altruistic purpose and is for the benefit of the society.  The individual is forced into thinking that the rules of the group must be obeyed at all personal costs and no dissenting views are permitted. Employees are rewarded amply for complete compliance and punished severely for disagreement and disobedience. The individual is encouraged to share vulnerabilities and weaknesses with the group, and these are used to exact compliance to group. Simultaneously, fear and threat are used if an individual wishes to leave the group. The group follows its own code of conduct and uses loaded language and signs to communicate.

In this situation, the individual is indirectly commanded to put his/her personal and family needs over the group or organization. An article of Vanity Fair titled “Lehman’s Desperate Housewives”  narrates the situation from Vicky Ward’s book -”The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers“ at Lehman before collapse. It says -

“Lehman Brothers C.E.O. Dick Fuld expected his top executives to get married, and stay married. For their wives, the firm was both fishbowl and shark tank, with unwritten rules about the clothes they wore, the charities they supported, and the hikes they took at the company’s Sun Valley retreats.

One of the senior executives wife described her child delivery with these words -

“I was in labor with our daughter and had to lie there without him … but I wouldn’t get mad at him—he had called the entire Hong Kong office in for a meeting. We knew that it would have been used against him. If you made a personal choice that hurt Lehman, it was over for you.”

Stage III – In the last stage, the indoctrination is complete. The individual’s motivation, judgments and perceptions are transformed as the person becomes a member. The individual derives his identity from the group or organization and opinions from outside the group are completely discarded. Any information that contradicts  the groups perception is considered harmful for group unity and the sender/ giver of the information is attacked. The individual has no freedom of action and blindly obeys instructions of the group. Unfortunately, the leaders and existing members of the group have so ingrained the thought pattern of socially and psychologically harmful behavior that they lose insight of right versus wrong.

For instance, as in the case of Enron or the more recent “News of the World” phone hacking scandal, seniors knew of the unethical and fraudulent activities being conducted in the organization. Some even know the details but will not take any concrete action to bring change.

Whether this culture sets in large organizations or small social groups, the psychological pattern is established for deviant behavior. The longer the person is a member of the group, the less probability exists of the person being able to see a true reflection of themselves. All inputs from group outsiders of logical, rational and socially acceptable behavior are disregarded and members adopt a posture of willful blindness. The members continue to compromise their morals for financial, physical and social security.

Closing Thoughts

Deviant cultures are set up by leaders in powerful positions with derailment attributes. However, once the culture is established in a social or corporate organization, it is hard to re-establish normal behavior patterns. People have a choice to either comply or be isolated. To avoid the social, physical and financial threats most compromise their morals and show unquestioning alliance to the more powerful people. Either an internal revolution by the members or  intervention from external parties can break the psychic trap established in such organizations. An individual’s best option is not to join such a group or organization, and if they have mistakenly joined it, leave at the earliest possible point. Else, the life course for unethical and criminal behavior is established without a return ticket.
References:

 1. Organi-cultural Deviance: Socialization of Individuals into Deviant Culture

2. Lehman’s Desperate Housewives – Vanity Fair

A Philosophical Discussion on Murder of Whistle Blowers

This Sunday, Anna Hazare is fasting in Delhi in support of Whistle Blower Protection Act. Indian laws don’t provide for whistle-blower protection and the damage is evident. Over the years, numerous whistle-blowers have lost their life. A few cases are covered up as personal dispute due to the high level corruption in the system.

Corruption benefits the majority, so does it make it acceptable? Legally, public will say – of course not. But even Hazare’s big protests in 2011 have lost public support. The government used delay tactics and maligned the name of key leaders of his team. Most state leaders didn’t want a Lokayukta in their states. There is no political will among the politicians, bureaucrats and business to pass a strong bill against corruption.

Then it isn’t surprising, that even on  witnessing the death of whistle blowers, public doesn’t protest about it. On the other hand, most keep quiet, lest they become the target. In such circumstances, majority of the people have given implicit consent to murder for their own self-interest. Of course readers would be outraged by this suggestion and claim they were no way involved in the murder. They didn’t give implicit consent!

Let us discuss this from a philosophical lens. Micheal Sandel, the Havard professor discusses this point in his video lectures : Justice – The Moral Side of Murder and The Case of Cannibalism. In the episode “Moral Side of Murder” he discusses a hypothetical case:

“Suppose you were driving a trolley on a rail track and its breaks failed. Five workers are ahead on the track, if you continue to drive straight, all five will die. On the other hand, in a diverging track, there is just one worker.  If you change track, that one worker will die but the other five will live. What is the right thing to do?”

Most students responded that they will swerve to the diverging track and chose to kill one to save five. At a psychological level, they have given moral justification of murder. Then Mr. Sandel gives another example :

“Suppose you are standing on a bridge with the track below, and you see this trolley hurtling without breaks. There are five workers on the track. There is a fat man standing next to you. If you push the fat man over the bridge, on the track, the lives of five workers would be saved. Would you do it?”

Majority of the students said – “No, they wouldn’t do it”. The reason is that it would involve explicitly murdering a person. Can we conclude from these examples, that human race is fine with implicit consent to murder however have qualms on explicitly murdering?

Some whistle blowers due to the psychological torture have committed suicide. That is an indirect attempt to murder. The rich and middle class gain from corruption, hence they give an implicit consent to murder of whistle-blowers. Does this statement hold true, or would you debate it?

Mr. Sandel discusses this in the next part of the lecture on cannibalism. He discusses The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens case, and the facts are as follows:

“At the trial of an indictment for murder it appeared, upon a special verdict, that the prisoners D. and S., seamen, and the deceased, a boy between seventeen and eighteen, were cast away in a storm on the high seas, and compelled to put into an open boat; that the boat was drifting on the ocean, and was probably more than 1000 miles from land; that on the eighteenth day, when they had been seven days without food and five without water, D. proposed to S. that lots should be cast who should be put to death to save the rest, and that they afterwards thought it would be better to kill the boy that their lives should be saved; that on the twentieth day D., with the assent of S., killed the boy, and both D. and S. fed on his flesh for four days; that at the time of the act there was no sail in sight nor any reasonable prospect of relief; that under these circumstances there appeared to the prisoners every probability that unless they then or very soon fed upon the boy, or one of themselves, they would die of starvation.”

To protect oneself or the majority, is murdering someone else justified? The students raised interesting aspects :

1) Some said if selection was done by lottery, then maybe it is illegal but more acceptable. Reason given was they would consider it that all participants on the boat knew the risks of losing.

2) A few students stated that if the boy would have volunteered to die for the benefit of others, it would be acceptable. The boy was an orphan and all others had family responsibilities.

In case of whistle-blower murders, the person dies without have consented to die or being made aware of the decision of the most. The majority votes behind his/her back for murder to safeguard themselves. Does that make majority behavior acceptable?

Watch the hour-long video, and share your thoughts.

In whistle blowing, most feel threatened about the repercussions from people in power and say that they have family responsibilities and cannot expose themselves to the risk. Hence, it is better to go against the whistle-blower attempting to do the right thing, than the person who is doing the wrong thing. Do the same psychological reasons as given in the above mentioned case apply when society goes against whistle blowers?

References:

Harvard University – Justice with Michael Sandel

Innovative Assurance and Advisory Services

The business teams mental picture of an auditor is of a guy focused on nitpicking financial accounts. The excessive focus from regulators on internal controls in finance processes has stereotyped auditors. However, in these dynamic economic conditions senior management expects internal auditors to break out of this image and become business partners. The question is – how can they do so? Let me share with you my story first.

My journey as an internal auditor changed in mid-nineties when I was an audit manager in an auditing firm. One day, I had a meeting with the client’s CAE to discuss the scope of work for the year. The client had in-house internal audit team and outsourced some areas of work. The CAE had mostly worked in UK and US, so was highly exposed to the international environment in comparison to the regular Indian CAEs at that time.

On starting the meeting, the CAE said – “Sonia, I think for the first quarter I would like you to cover marketing and customer service department.” I swallowed and nodded agreement.

He then continued – “Next quarter you can cover production”. I squeaked – “Production?” He replied – “Yes, shop floor audit would be interesting.” I tried to keep my expression under control and not show my shock, and again nodded in agreement.

He further added -”Last two quarters of the year, you can cover purchase department and inventory function”. I knew something about these two areas, so I tried to breathe. As the meeting closed, I started thinking how I am going to execute this scope of work. You see, there was a small hitch. I generally did service industry audit and this client manufactured cranes and forklifts. What does one audit in marketing of cranes? How are cranes produced? I was absolutely clueless.

As I drove back I wondered whether my boss had intentionally skipped the meeting. He knew if he had accepted this scope of work, I would have had reasons to crib. Now as I had accepted the scope of work, I couldn’t crib. If I did, he would say – “Sonia, you should have negotiated better.” So I took a small diversion and stop, before reaching my office. My boss was eagerly waiting and from his expression I knew he had already spoken to the CAE. It was a setup! I presented him the scope of work letter, my bookstore bill and the five books I had purchased on marketing function on the way back. He smiled gleefully.

I knew I was in trouble. In those days there was no internet and google in India. I tried to figure out how I  could convince my team that I knew more about marketing cranes than spell it.

Later on I realized that these assignments were the turning points in my career. They shook me out of my comfort zone and taught me a lot. While I could earlier rattle off the financial numbers of my clients, I really didn’t understand their business. What did they do? How did they make money? What challenges do they face in the market place? Without understanding the business, one could hardly do any value add.

So the relevant question is how can auditors become business consultants? Primarily internal auditors are driven in scoping their work according to materiality in financial statements. If we change the focus from financial to business, the scope of work automatically changes. I am sharing with you some of my ideas.

Of course as you read some of the suggestions the question will come up, does it fit into the third line of defense (internal audit), second line of defense (risk management) or the first line of defense (business teams). My view is that first an organization should decide, is this what they require? If yes, then they need to find an appropriate fit in their structure. Though some of these services do not fit the traditional sense of audit, they add a lot of business value. Moreover, the skill set required to perform these services is the same as an auditor or risk manager. The mindset has to be different.

The argument against it is that these are management responsibilities as some of these either appear to be focused on preventive or detective controls, and moreover do not focus on financial processes. The question to ask is – is management fulfilling these responsibilities in other functions? Additionally, if business risks and controls are not addressed, doesn’t it impact financial processes and income? Maybe, senior management needs to come out of the SOX mindset and think differently. Read on and share your views with me.

1.  Job Work Review

I am sure you must be wondering here – what is she referring to? As a corporate citizen you must have heard of management saying that with so many resources the work is still not done. On the other hand employees lament that they are over worked due to insufficient bandwidth. One wonders, are they talking about the same organization? Let me explain in detail as to what we can focus on here.

I had a banking client where the management and employees were in this tussle. Since it was an Indian nationalized bank, the tussle was fast becoming a labor union issue. Management appointed our company to identify the real work issues at a sample branch to resolve the problems. The branch had 50 odd employees and as a first step we asked them to fill a detailed form listing out their activities on a daily, weekly and monthly basis along with the time. We also gave time sheets for the bank employees to fill for a fortnight to record actual work done with time spent.

Meanwhile we analysed job descriptions, processes, MIS and business applications to assess the real activities performed by various departments within the branch. Finally, we conducted interviews with the employees to discuss our observations relating to their job roles and work done. We were able to identify duplicate work done, opportunities for minimizing manual work by using technology, improving processes, reducing time spent on non-value add work, restructuring department functioning and changing job roles. This improved the efficiency of the branch operations besides resolving the management problems.

In another similar assignment for a law office, we analysed billable and non-billable time spent by attorneys. By transferring the non-billable activities to other job roles, the attorneys were able to increase their billable time, hence directly improve revenues.

Point is, all managers are told to prioritize work. Ever wondered, what percentage of managers to do it successfully. Additionally, what is the impact on revenues because of failure to do so? Isn’t it worth checking out. Shouldn’t organizations focus on employee risks? Employee risks are turning big and are mostly un-addressed.

2. Build Risk Assessment Tools

The business teams are primarily responsible for managing risks, however are not trained on risk management. The internal auditors and risk managers have vast knowledge of business risks. Then isn’t it worthwhile to bridge this gap. Here I will give you an example of what we did for a software development company.

The program managers were running million dollar software projects. As you know, the project risks impact cost, quality and time of the project. The software development teams focus more of running the project than doing project risk management. Hence, we developed an excel tool for them. The spreadsheet contained over 600 risks on various stages of a software development project. The project manager just had to assess whether a risk was applicable to the project and select a listed risk mitigation plan. S/he had to input the name of the person responsible for managing the risk and time schedule. In rare cases only, project teams identified a new risk, that we incorporated in the next version of the tool. An activity which took the project teams days of discussion could be completed within a day and project manager could review the risk status within an hour on a weekly basis. An overall organization count was available on risks occurrence, success/ failure of mitigation plans and risk losses.

Empowering the business teams with appropriate tools to conduct risk management is far more beneficial than a post facto audit. A reduction in risk loss directly improves profitability.

3.  Process Design Review

Internal audit and risk management functions generally are not involved in the process review at the designing and re-engineering stage. They audit the process after it is functioning and then identify control gaps and give recommendations for improvement. Doesn’t this sound like attempting to catch an elephant by its tail. I will share with you my ideas on this area.

When an organization is establishing its back offices, usually the processes are migrated with the same controls as were existing before. However, the risks and control requirement change considerably on process migration. If an auditor reviews the process and standard operating procedures at the process migration stage, not only business risks will be addressed it will save a lot of time in doing a subsequent audit. Additionally, management will be able to identify whether the process is high, medium or low risk and budget risk loss accordingly in the cost-benefit model.

The same applies when management is re-engineering processes according to six-sigma or lean or any other model. Sometimes on re-engineering processes, the existing control steps are removed to reduce work time and improve efficiency. However, no other compensating controls are put. This increases the risk of the process without management’s knowledge.

Reviewing processes proactively for controls and risks reduces probability of subsequent damage due to control failure. It significantly mitigates fraud risk also. Moreover, it reduces the audit time significantly.

4. Software Implementation Review

Again I see here that auditors review application controls at the time of SOX or financial audit. An assurance  needs to be given on the technology controls. However, the cost of changing an application program after implementation is 3-4 times the cost at the time of development. Hence, doesn’t it make sense to review the software program at the time of implementation, whether it is an ERP or customized application.

To demonstrate the value of the work, I am narrating my experience of doing an assignment for a government tax department in India. The department was implementing technology for the first time to improve tax collection. According to its estimates because of the manual systems and delay in collecting information, it was losing revenue in millions due to tax evasion. They had appointed a hardware vendor and software vendor, and then my organization for auditing. We worked with the department to review the technology implementation strategy, user and functional specifications for controls, network diagram for information security and conducted application controls testing. This saved the department from various problems that would have occurred after implementation.

Proactively addressing technology controls saves the organization subsequent cost of changing them and mitigates the risks occurring from control lapses. Conducting an ongoing review of implementation of critical business applications is beneficial.

 5. Policy Decisions Review

Now this is something that most auditors and risk managers do not go near as policy making is management responsibility. However, I am going to narrate an incident here, and let you decide whether it makes sense to re-look the policies.

I was conducting a financial statements audit of a consumer goods trading company. While checking the discounts given on a product, I realized that the total discount given was eroding the profit margin. The company had various discount categories, for instance – special discounts, festival discounts, dealer discounts etc.. However, it was not calculating the total of these discounts for each product. Hence, didn’t realize that though the sales were increasing the discount policies were faulty and eating away the profit margin. I did a marginal costing analysis, and assessed that if they continued with this policy the company will lose its “going concern” status in three years. Management was horrified on seeing my report and realizing that various discount policies cumulatively could have such an impact.

Look at it from another angle. If you see the banking sub-prime crises, maybe a review of the policies to give loans to financially weak or unstable income borrowers would have reduced the risk. If the banks had just disbursed loans to this category to a small percentage of the total retail lending, this situation may not have occurred. Conducting an audit after loan disbursement and commenting on the quality of loans hardly helps.

My suggestion here is that when policies are issued, they need to be reviewed for financial and risk impact. Issuing single policies doesn’t sound like a big deal, however when sum total impact of a group of policies in a specific area is analysed, the picture is quite different.

6. Fraud Risk Assessment

In a speech given by Governor, Reserve Bank of India to Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in December 2011, he said – “The profession has shied away from the responsibility for prevention and early detection of fraud.” This is a valid allegation, although fraud risk is increasing at a tremendous rate, most organizations lack focus. Banks have fraud risk functions, however they are more focused on investigations. The thrust on fraud prevention can be improved.

Let me give you an example here. In India either banks are shifting back office operations or outsourcing it to vendors. Now these back offices have multiple processes, mostly run by people who are service delivery experts. The teams sometimes lack banking industry knowledge and are clueless on fraud risks of the process. At the time of process migration, training is provided to detect transaction level fraud. However, if you ask the process owners whether the processes they are running are – high, medium or low fraud risk, they will be unable to answer that.

I had once with my team developed a fraud risk assessment tool for banking back office operations. A weight was given to each data item that could result in fraud. For example, an employee having access to customer information can conduct account takeover fraud in a call center. The information normally required is name of the customer, account number, address, date of birth and debit/credit card number. If this data is available, the probability of fraud increases. Hence, the tool captured the data availability for each process and calculated the level of fraud risk for the process. Management and process owners knew the high fraud risk processes and could allocate more resources to fraud prevention to these processes. Incorporating controls in these processes reduced the overall fraud risk of the organization.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Kroll Fraud Report of 2011 states that globally organizations reported on an average 2.1% of earnings loss due to fraud and nearly 1/5 of the organizations had 4% earnings loss. In case of senior management involvement, for instance – Satyam, Enron, WorldCom, – organizations are nearly wiped out. Fraud risk additionally impacts financial, reputation and legal risks. Hence, organizations definitely need to focus on it.

 7. Review of Management Programs

Management initiates various programs, namely for – innovation, research, quality improvement, leadership development, etc. There is a lot of time and money spent on these programs as these enable the organizations to gain a competitive advantage. Risk managers talk about competitive advantage risks, however these programs do not come under the review radar of either internal auditors or risk managers. They check that the cost of programs is booked correctly, and are unconcerned about the success of the program and/or reasons for failure. Reason being, no obvious risk is seen.

My view is that if a program is developed to gain competitive advantage, then obviously its failure results in increasing competitive disadvantage. That increases business risks. These risks might not be immediately quantifiable, but have long-term impact. However, the reasons for program failure are not obvious and results in sunk costs for the program.

For instance, in a company I had run an organization survey to get feedback on implementation of a quality framework. Normally, negative feedback identifies the following problems – lack of senior management support, insufficient training, lack of implementation support, no hand-holding done in first project etc. In the feedback given, the respondents stated that these issues were addressed well and they had no complaints on these fronts. However, they were not motivated to use the framework because their was no reward or recognition system in place for doing well in this area. After implementing an employee bonus scheme for adopting the framework and using it well, participants commitment levels for the program improved.

As I had mentioned in an earlier post “Creativity@Risk“, organizations innovation programs may not be effective because creativity is not valued. I had given steps to audit creativity levels in the organization. Think of it, if innovation and research is failing, don’t the competitive advantage risks increase. How are organizations calculating and addressing these risks?

8. Brand Building Programs Review

Organizations are investing heavily in building brand names to gain competitive advantage and customer loyalty. They run advertising, social media and corporate social responsibility programs geared towards it. However, some are succeeding in their efforts, while others are reaching nowhere, specially Indian companies. For example, the global Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Leader report of 2011 in the top 100 brand names doesn’t even mention one Indian company. Hence, the question is where are all the advertising and brand building budgets going?

A review of the effectiveness of these programs helps to build better customer relationships. For example, some banks to get Gen Y customers have launched games on their website. If a customer logs in and does some transaction or activity on the website, s/he gathers points. After accumulating certain number of points, the customer is given a small gift. It is targeted towards building customer retention and loyalty. The cost of the program is low, impact is high.

Another aspect now facing organizations is social media risks. Any negative information that goes viral can damage the company reputation. Hence, the probability of reputation risks has increased. To ensure that these are properly mitigated and the programs are effective, these programs can be periodically reviewed.

9. Strategy Review

In an earlier post I had mentioned a point from a McKinsey report. It states that just 8% of the respondents said that their organizations review strategies on an ongoing basis. In 42% cases, the organizations were not conducting annual reviews of strategy. Now without reviewing the strategy, how do organizations really know where they are heading.

In another recent report of Economist Intelligence Unit  titled “The Long View” the key observation was that – “The time horizons for strategy and risk are often misaligned. Some companies are making longterm strategic plans without a proper consideration of the associated risks.” The main reason is that risk management is considered an operational activity rather than a strategic function. This is highlighted by the fact that just 24% organizations think that risk analysis is vital for strategy development.

To illustrate the need for strategy review, I am narrating an incident. I was pitching for work to a CEO. He handed me his strategy documents for building 100 collection centers. I analysed the numbers, and realized that though the revenue numbers and assumptions were correct, the costing was not so. I visited a few collection centers, developed an operational plan and costing analysis and submitted the revised numbers. When the CEO saw the numbers, he asked me for my recommendation. I said in a straight forward manner – “If I was in your position I wouldn’t implement this project. Though revenue numbers are good, the break even point is at 75%. There are no quick earnings and failure probability is high.” The CEO agreed to my observation and project was not undertaken.

As I persistently continue to make this point, strategy review is essential for success. A lot of funds are wasted on wrong strategies. Start with focusing on the strategy formation process and reviewing business strategies to move up the value chain.

10. Business Continuity Plan Review

Most organization dependent on information technology have disaster recovery plans and/or IT recovery strategies. Few have developed and implemented full-fledged business continuity plans envisaging various  natural and man-made disasters. Although, with the increasing frequencies of floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and terrorist attacks this would be an obvious move. Last year the earthquake in Japan and floods in Thailand caused problems for companies worldwide whose vendors were located in these countries. The supply chain broke down.

Conducting a business impact analysis requires breaking each activity in the business process as critical, necessary and optional in case of a disaster. These activities might be required in normal business functioning but not in a disaster scenario. For example, for a bank having credit card operations running 24/7 is critical, however a loan application approval process can be delayed without a big problem for a couple of days. A solution is required for all critical activities. For instance, in 9/11 attacks in US, the Amex center in Delhi acted as the back up center for US offices. It was one of the few companies whose customers didn’t feel any impact on customer service due to the incident. Hence, ensuring that all critical activities have a backup facility with trained resources operable in a short time span is critical for business continuity.

A review of the plan and testing documents ensures that there are no gaps and all possible disaster scenarios are covered. A periodical review is required as sometimes processes and business change, while the business continuity plan is not updated.

Closing Thoughts

To provide value add to business, auditors and risk managers need to focus on these services. Big 4 earn most of their revenues providing these services to clients as few companies have developed in-house capability.  Though some organizations have shown progressive thinking and renamed internal audit departments as business assurance and advisory function. One arm of the department focuses on regulatory requirements of internal audit and the other arm focuses on providing assurance and advisory services to various stakeholders within the enterprise. The cost of setting up the function is low, the rewards are high.  Senior managers just have to re-imagine audit and risk management functions. It will be worthwhile.

References:

1. The long view - Getting new perspective on strategic risk by Economist Intelligence Unit
2. Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Leaders 2011
3. Challenges to the Accounting Profession Some Reflections – Speech of  Dr. Duvvuri Subbarao, Governor of Reserve Bank of India on 16 December

Strategy to Execution – A Risky Path

Some companies fail and some succeed spectacularly in the same market conditions. The question for successful companies is – what did they do differently? On the other hand, failure is attributed to either poor strategy or pathetic operations.  A popular notion among managers is that if company is not achieving targets, then review the strategy, something must be wrong with it. If the strategy is found reliable, review the operations and focus on it to be successful.  Is the explanation for failure that simple?

In my view failures occur because complexities of the situation are either ignored or misunderstood. The third-fourth-fifth dimensions are normally missed and must be looked into. The overall strategy might be right, the execution flawless, and  the company may still be staring in the face of failure. According to me the path from strategy to execution is very risky. Below are my views on the same, do you agree with them?

1. The Human Dimension

Let me give you an example, that most employees are familiar with:

Objective of the company : Make the organization a “Great place to work”.

Strategy to achieve the objective : Focus on diversity, work-life balance and good leadership pipeline.

Execution plans :  Hire 25% women, promote 10% women to senior levels, issue policy of work life balance , introduce 360 degree feedback and balance score card system.

All the execution plans were implemented, however employees are still cribbing and consider the organization one of the worst places to work. So what went wrong?

Now let me give you a few situations that occurred in the organization :

a) A gorgeous looking woman was placed in a senior management position who was rumored to be having an affair with a CXO. Employees down the line didn’t like her personally as she did not have a reputation of high professional caliber or ethics.

b) A few employees in the 360 degree feedback, gave honest negative feedback about their bosses. In less than a quarter the bosses with help of human resource department terminated or demoted the employees.

c) Bosses allowed the employees to leave office premises by 6 pm. However, they asked employees to work at home and deliver reports the next morning at 9 am.

The missing component – the human dimension – was overlooked. The culture of the organization didn’t change with the strategies and plans. The messages that employees received were –  ”One gets promoted if one sucks up to the boss, merit doesn’t count, honesty has a huge downside and bosses will harass.  Nothing has changed.” The tone at the top remained the same and no one was seen walking the talk. Hence, though everything looked good on paper, and all execution deliverables were achieved, the execution team met the key performance indicators, the objective wasn’t accomplished. People make the difference, hence analyzing culture, messages and in some situations even the grapevine is helpful.

2. The Organization History

The often ignored impediment in failure of strategy is the organization history. History – good and bad - makes a difference in success and failure of strategy as it directly impacts commitment levels. If the organization has had bad incidents or history, a host of issues become undiscussable. These undiscussable issues make communication superficial, hide negatives in the wood work and portray a picture that management wants to hear. In a globally connected world, even a small incident can become a historical landmark. To bring clarity to my point, I am narrating an incident that I experienced.

I was working in an organization in which one of the core values was “respect for everyone’s time”. The offices were open plan, with no difference between a CEO desk and an admin desk. All meetings were conducted in various conference rooms and room bookings were done through an intranet application. The cultural guideline was – do not overstay in a room as it may be booked by another group/individual. There were no reserved conference rooms for senior managers.

One day a new employee with his group saw that the people in the conference room he had booked for a meeting continued in the room after their meeting time elapsed. He knocked on the room, and asked the team inside to leave. The other employees outside were horrified. After 5 minutes, when he saw no action, he again knocked. The team inside walked out and all employees were red-faced. The poor chap had just evicted the Global CEO and his executive team out from the conference room.

News traveled globally within a few hours of the incident. The mathematical geniuses developed statistical models on probability of the new employee being asked to leave. Others like me, indulged in simple betting. Within a week the CEO sent a global message appreciating the employee for adhering to the organization values. He said that he felt good that induction training was effective, HR was doing a good job in recruitment & selection, and employees were fearless in confronting seniors on core organization values. All employees were absolutely jubilant on losing their bets. The incident became part of organization history and employees were inspired by the leadership. Commitment to a strategy comes from the heart and not by the numbers given in a Powerpoint presentation. In some situations analyzing the past history of the organization and failure rate of strategies might be helpful.

3. Reliance on Performance Management Systems

Norman Marks in his post – “The inter-relationships of risk, objectives, strategy and performance“ rightly said that “performance management without considering risk is flying blind.” I agree with this statement. However, my question is – are organizations really measuring the right stuff ? If not, are organizations deluding themselves into believing that they are monitoring and as all performance indicators show green status, everything is great.

Let me narrate here my pet peeve on risk management performance indicators. Tell me, how many of us have filled a balance score card or prepared an annual plan stating the number of risk management reports issued during the year. Additionally, recall numerous times assurance has been given to senior management based on the reports issued and their findings.

According to me, these performance indicators for a risk management department make limited sense. Better indicators would be :

a) To calculate the amount of loss averted from timely risk mitigation. Or,

b) Counting the number of days organization risk was higher than the established risk appetite of the company.

However, only a few companies keep these performance parameters because these are difficult to calculate and require robust management systems. So we rely on parameters that are actually not telling us anything more than the fact that some work is being done. Therefore, my contention is that even if a the risk of not issuing 12 risk management reports (a performance measure) during the year would be available, it may be irrelevant risk identification. A good idea when doing management by objectives, is to check what the company is measuring.

4. The Organization Structure & Systems

The focus is not developing the strategy and operation plans, however the point that is missed is – whether the organization structure and systems are conducive towards accomplishing the envisaged operations efficiency.

The prime example of this is establishing backoffice operations in emerging markets or outsourcing processes. Most organizations initially off shored to save on costs. The cost-benefit analysis was done considering the explicit cost of labor and other costs in mind. However, the implicit cost of managing the operations remotely, variance in customer service quality, breakdown of services and increased risk of fraud were not considered. Quite frequently, the same process was outsourced without much re-engineering for outsourcing the process. This resulted in cumbersome and long processes, higher management time and more risks. In rare cases only the organization structure was aligned to outsourcing activities and managing the complex relationships.

In this case, the strategy was fine, effort was put in setting up back office operations properly. However, the interlinked impact on various functions and activities was ignored. Basically the problems arose due to structure and systems, as these were not considered at the strategy formation stage.

5. Strategic Risk Management

Finally, the concept of strategic risk management is gaining popularity, though it still has a long way to go. Problems sometimes arise in implementing a strategy, because at the time of formulation the strategic risks were not identified and assessed. Hence, the organization has a rosy picture of the strategy.

The additional challenge is when strategic risks are identified though not properly. Some hold the opinion that strategic risks are best identified by the top management or chief risk manager. The frontline operations teams do not have a role to play. My view is that while strategy may be developed at the top, the risks need to be captured at all levels and rolled up to the strategy development team.

To illustrate, let me share with you the venture of international fast food joints in India. KFC, McDonalds etc. made losses in the Indian market initially. The reason for entering the Indian market was clear – a huge educated middle class provided a good customer base. They replicated their operations model in India. However, they really didn’t understand Indian tastes. Indians preferred spicy food and didn’t appreciate the American bland taste. Secondly, Indians initially took these meals as snacks and not for lunch or dinner. Hence, were willing to spend much less than they would in an Indian restaurant.  It took the companies 3-4 years to understand the difference in customer tastes and expenditure patterns, and change the menu accordingly. Customer risk was local whereas the strategy was formed globally. Strategy failed due to lack of understanding of local market.

Hence, in my view strategic risk management is not a simple exercise undertaken at the top of the company pyramid. A robust enterprise risk management system aligning objectives, strategies and risks is definitely beneficial. If an organization is not meeting its key performance indicators, even when their are no obvious problems with operations, a through analysis of risks at all levels sheds light on quite a few issues.

6. Impact of Systemic Risks

Another aspect that is least understood in organizations is systemic risks. Organizations adopting enterprise risk management assume that since the key risk indicators are showing low risk, everything is running smoothly. However, as seen in the financial crises, the impact of systemic risks is huge. Underestimating it or ignoring it can nearly wipe out the organization.

Turner report highlighted the impact of systemic risks in the banking sector with the following lines:

“Five key features of this new model played a crucial role in increasing systemic risks, contributing to the credit boom in the upswing and exacerbating the self-reinforcing nature of the subsequent downswing:
(i) The growing size of the financial sector.
(ii) Increasing leverage – in many forms.
(iii) Changing forms of maturity transformation.
(iv) A misplaced reliance on sophisticated maths.
(v) Hard-wired procyclicality.”

Although, in the blame game the investment bankers are being labeled as culprits for playing in the CDO market, the interconnections between retail and investment banking  resulted in the crises. The retail bankers gave home loans to individuals with doubtful repayment capacity to leverage the boom in real estate market. Simple explanation is that the collapse of real estate market negatively impacted recovery of loans which resulted in making the CDOs worthless. The key lesson to learn here is that strategies can fail majorly if they are not protected against the impact of systemic risks.

7. Leadership Quality

The quality of leaders makes the largest difference to an organization’s success. Can one imagine GE’s tremendous success without Jack Welch? He accomplished a lot as a leader, though he portrays himself modestly in his book “Straight From The Gut” . He narrates -

“I came to the job without any external CEO skills. I had rarely dealt with anyone in Washington, even though the government was more into business than ever. I had little experience dealing with the media. My only press conference was scripted session with Reg on the day GE announced I would the the next chairman. I had only one or two brief outings before the Wall Street analysts who followed GE. And out 500,000-plus shareholders had no idea who Jack Welch was and whether he would be able to fill the shoes of the most admired businessman in America.”

Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” analysed the impact on companies that had level 5 leaders. Organizations with level 5 leaders showed consistent performance and a far better share holder return than their industry counterparts. Hence, if either strategy or operations are failing, the quality of leadership should be looked into.

8. Assessment of  Strategy Formation Process

Last but not the least is a discussion on strategy itself. Two thoughts come into mind – how should a strategy be assessed for effectiveness and when should the strategy be modified or changed? The quality of strategy itself is in doubt sometimes.

The key reasons for adopting a wrong or misguided strategy relate to some of the points I had mentioned in my earlier posts on strategic risk management :

a) Very few organizations have a proper process for strategy formation. For most it is an end of the year data accumulation practice from different business units. An organization level strategy considering all interconnected aspects of business may not have been devised.

b) Board and CXOs generally do not negate a strategy given by the CEO or fellow colleague. The political repercussions of challenging a CEO/CXOs strategy can be huge, hence most keep their opposing opinions to themselves.

c) If the organization culture is not focused on creativity, ideas and learning, new strategies will not be presented for fear of being mocked or run over. Hence, contrary to popular perceptions the strategy pipeline is quite dry.

d) Moreover, the choices of strategy selection with CEO/CXO are limited. They receive ideas which people down the line have collectively agreed to. These might not be the best ideas as the popular ones generally do not shake people out of their comfort zones.

Understanding these circumstances for assessing the quality of strategy can be difficult. Senior management in such situations has to start from scratch to develop a strategy formation process. If the formation process is full of loopholes or ineffective, the probability of having a good strategy is low.

Closing Thoughts

In nutshell, getting the strategy and operations right is critical for organization success. However, these two components itself do not guarantee success, they are just the building blocks. Other management and organization parts need to be aligned properly to the objectives and strategy of the organization. A holistic picture is required to accomplish objectives. In case of failure in achieving objectives, a review of strategy and operations is definitely beneficial. However, aspects underlining these should be delved into deeply to do a proper root cause analysis. Looking beyond the obvious helps.

References:

1. Turner report – A regulatory response to global financial crises – Financial Serivices Authority, UK
2. Straight from the gut- Jack Welch with Johm A. Byrne
3. Good to Great – Jim Collins
4. Norman Marks Blog

The Business Enterprise Magazine published this post in February 2012 issue.

Derailment of Leaders- Profiling Steve Jobs

The corporate world citizens operate on two myths – “We all are great leaders” and “We all have bad bosses”. We cling to these two fallacies with our dear life, most probably because if we let it go, corporate life may become unbearable. These two paradoxical statements make us feel better about ourselves as the delusional views cushion us from harsh realities.

The problem arises due to corporate world’s obsession with leadership. Interviewers question a 21-year-old fresher in the first interview about his/her leadership skills. After six months, s/he will give an opinion how the CEO doesn’t have adequate leadership skills. An employee will risk his/her career if s/he admits that they are good managers and do not have adequate leadership skills. This is despite the fact that most leadership surveys show that 50% of the managers are ineffective leaders.

On the humorous side it reminds me of Scott Adams definition of leadership – “Leadership is an intangible quality with no clear definition. That’s probably a good thing, because if people being led knew the definition, they would hunt down their leaders and kill them.”

On a serious note, I couldn’t help contemplating about Steve Jobs, considered the most successful CEO in our times. He is one of the few CEOs who was thrown out of the company he formed and came back to succeed beyond anyone’s expectations. On the positive side, people viewed him as a visionary, innovator and a driving force. Moreover, his negative traits were equally prominent. His teams said he suffered from “distorted reality”, bullied them no end and was extremely insulting. His professional career shows that in some ways he was an insufferable bad boss and an incredibly good leader. The complexities of his character make an interesting case study to assess leadership derailment.

I read his biography by Walter Isaacson and mapped his leadership skills to the traits mentioned in Michael James Benson’s research paper titled “A Walk on the Dark Side of Personality & Implications for Leadership (In)Effectiveness.” Briefly, it states that derailed leaders have same traits as successful leaders. However, they have additional traits and personality flaws that cause derailment. In Isaacson’s book, initially Jobs showed most of the traits that result in leadership derailment. In his second coming at Apple, he showed more maturity and balanced it out. A mellow version of his intense personality made him more successful.

It is important for risk managers to understand the derailment traits for leadership. Enron, WorldCom, Satyam are prime examples of leadership gone wrong. Prevalence of derailment traits and major personality flaws cause leaders to take unnecessary business risks, create dysfunctional work cultures and have low focus on corporate governance. As top management drives the risk culture in an organization, it is worthwhile for risk managers to assess their derailment characteristics.

In the following paragraphs, I am discussing five derailment traits and am exemplifying it with Steve Jobs life. Before you start reading it, remember all leaders have these traits. Leaders possessing these traits in low to moderate qualities continue to be successful. However, excessiveness of these traits causes derailment.

1.       Ego-centered

People close to Steve Jobs thought that he felt a strong sense of abandonment due to his adoption. This propelled him to consider himself special,  i.e. not required to follow norms of regular people. His ex-girlfriend Redse even thought that he had narcissistic personality disorder.

An amusing story about his employee badge showed his false sense of entitlement. On Apple’s formation, Scott assigned employee badge number #1 to Woznaik and #2 to Jobs. Steve demanded badge #1 and when he didn’t get it, he asked for  badge #0. He kept the badge, though Bank of America still processed his salary as employee number #2.

 His personality flaws showed in other small things. For example, he didn’t want a “reserved for CEO” parking slot, however parked his car in slots reserved for handicapped people.

 His ego-centrism drove Apple in murky waters. He wished to project the image that he didn’t work for money and took a salary of $1 per year as CEO. In 2000 when the board offered him $14 million stock options, he refused and asked for a plane. Subsequently, he demanded $20 million stock options. He received backdated stock options and although he didn’t make any monetary gains from it, Apple got some negative publicity as SEC investigated the case. Walter commented that – “On compensation issues in particular, the difficulty of defying his whims drove some good people to make some bad mistakes.”

 2.    Manipulation

 Everyone thought Steve Jobs was a master manipulator.  Sometimes, for him there was no difference between truth and lies. Bud Tribble one of his teammates said Steve doesn’t accept facts, which do not fit, into his picture. He said, “Steve has a reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is malleable.”  

 Another colleague Andy Hertzfeld said that even if one knew that Steve was manipulating, a person still was influenced. He stated- “The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.”  

 Adding to the trouble, his teams complained that if their idea were a good one – “he would soon be telling people about it as though it was his own.”

 Apple employees though knew they had a difficult boss, still considered themselves lucky to be working for him. He inspired people to do what they thought was unachievable. Most probably because manipulators are great at cajoling, persuading and flattering people into complying with their wishes.

However, this did create a dysfunctional culture in Apple. Due to his oscillating behavior, his staff handled him like fragile glass. Most probably, Apple lost quite a few top performers because of this treatment given to them.

He definitely lost his job as a CEO because his manipulations caused turmoil in Apple in 1985. Apple board ousted him out and Sculley remained.

3.    Micromanaging

In some ways, Jobs can be categorized as a control freak. He chose to integrate hardware and software of his products to control customer experience. At one point of time, he banned download of applications to iPad and iPhone that defame people, were politically explosive or pornographic. He morally policed his customers.  According to him, he was providing his customers – “Freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn.”

Throughout his career, he was at war with Bill Gates on open versus closed platforms. Gates promoted open systems while Jobs ardently opposed it. Though he professed to belong to hacker counterculture, he didn’t want people to be able to use Apple’s platforms without permission.

Even in designing and developing products, Jobs controlled every aspect of the decision-making. His teams while appreciating his capacity to go into the details, did resent lack of authority to some extent. He had the final say even on the look of the cord and sockets of the products. He ran the organization at 10,000 feet and zero feet.

The awesome bit is that with his ideas and approach he managed to change six industries and developed path-breaking products. In this, his customers were not complaining, his competitors were. His control philosophy made the technological world sit up and take notice. One has to marvel at it, and contemplate whether micro managing has benefits in some situations.

4.     Intimidating

Steve Jobs learnt his most effective intimidation trick from Robert Friedland in college. He unblinkingly stared intensely at others and them kept silent for a long time to unnerve opponents.

Moreover, if some project or product didn’t meet his “insanely great” standard, the product was shit and the guy was a bozo. His colleagues referred it to as “hero/shithead dichotomy”. He voiced his unedited opinions without the normal social graces that caused many of his teammates to breakdown emotionally. . His frequent unfiltered scathing comments were hurtful and created a fear factor. Although, known to be emotionally intelligent, he was unrepentant of mistreating others.

Though his behavior looked like my way of highway, he succeeded as he appreciated the people who confronted him. His teams could push back and if Steve found the person capable, he would respect the person. His Mac team gave an annual award to the employee who did the best job of standing up to him. “Jobs knew about it and liked it.”

However, in the second stint as CEO, his intimidating nature negatively affected independence of the board. For instance, he invited former SEC chairperson Arthur Levitt to join the board. But, when he read Levitt’s speech on independence of board, he withdrew the invitation on phone.

5.    Passive Aggressive

 Jobs was blatantly aggressive; hence, this trait didn’t fit his personality. However, his partner Steve Woznaik did show this trait to an excessive level. For instance, Woznaik was hesitant of participating in Apple in a leadership position. He said he was happy that – “I could stay at the bottom of the organization chart as an engineer.” He never attempted to be a manager or leader. He played the good guy image to the hilt. While he appeared satisfied for Jobs to take up the mantle of bad guy and fight the corporate battles.

Woznaik claimed in his biography that he did a job for Atari to remove chips and Steve cheated him of the bonus. He claimed  - “Ethics always mattered to me, and I still don’t understand why he would’ve gotten paid one thing and told me he’d gotten paid another. But, you know, people are different.” He further added – “I would rather let it pass. It’s not something I want to judge Steve by.”

 Steve Jobs on the other hand denied the allegation and said that he has always been fair to Woz. He said in his defense – “In mean, Woz stopped working in 1978. He never did an ounce of work after 1978. And yet he got exactly the same shares of Apple stock that I did.” It showed Woz avoided confronting Steve though didn’t mind maligning his reputation. Woz projected an image of childlike innocence. I suspect, without Steve Jobs driving force and personality Apple would have collapsed if Woz had become the torch-bearer.

Closing thoughts

Leadership is a complex phenomenon and the more I read about it, the more I think Scott Adams definition is accurate. There is a lot of truth in it. However, as risk managers we cannot take leadership derailment traits lightly. Excessive derailment traits create a dysfunctional organization culture. They are a harbinger of unprecedented risk taking activities. Uncontrolled behavior can put organizations in peril. Hence, risk managers need to devise ways to monitor it. They must ensure proper checks are incorporated in succession planning for early detection of derailment traits.

“One more thing”, what do you think it takes to become a Steve Jobs of risk management?

References:

1. New Explorations in the Field of Leadership Research: A Walk on the Dark Side of Personality & Implications for Leadership (In)Effectiveness - By Michael James Benson

2. Steve Jobs – Biography by Walter Isaacson

Risk Management Induction Training to Business Teams

I had joined a new company and was taking the induction training. I thought it would be a good idea to get fellow participants perspective.So I asked a young employee – “How did you find the risk management induction training?” He responded – “Was that training? It sounded more like a rulebook of corporate prison.” The training had bored me to death and I shared his opinion. I wondered whether risk management team took feedback seriously or were purposely designing trainings to turn off new employees.

Normally in India, a trainer reads out from the presentation the various dos and don’ts of the organization’s code of conduct, regulations impacting the organization and technicalities of business ethics. To enhance interest further some provide detailed information of GRC organization chart. The training comes to a dramatic end when in the last few slides, the trainer delivers the key message to the participants – We will fire you if you do not follow all this.

The newcomers already have butterflies in their stomachs. To add to their woes, we present a dry subject in a dull and boring manner. Then we expect them to imbibe the messages in their daily working life. Let’s face it, we are facing competition from Lady Gaga.  Gen Y is more likely to remember the lyrics of her song, than risk management training. To get their attention we need to reframe risk management training. There is no rulebook that says trainings must be without any rammatazz and unimaginative to the core.

Yeah, that's a HR Management book

I contacted Peter Cook, an unconventional and creative business author, speaker and consultant, to get his views. He is reinventing the art of human resource management. His recent book “Punk Rock People Management” is a winner. He innovatively connects human resource fundamentals with music. Unbelievable but true, you have to read one of his books to find out how he does it. His perceptive views on induction enormously impressed me. Here is my favorite paragraph from the book:

“Post-punk princesses Madonna and Lady Gaga unwittingly stumbled upon the problem of induction with their songs ‘Like a Virgin’ and ‘Bad Romance’ as did punk group The Boys with their minor hit ‘It’s my first time’. However good your hiring of people is,  failing to induct people properly can cost you in thelong run. Classical HR induction sessions emphasize all the statutory stuff, such as health and safety and getting your corporate identity badge (whilst losing your identity). But they generally fail to establish what is called a ‘psychological contract’ between the new recruit and the company, which leads to long-term performance and commitment. The costs of NOT doing this include rapid turnover, poor performance, corporate sabotage and mental sabbaticals (the lights are on but no-one’s at home) etc.”

Peter makes an excellent point about psychological connection. Risk management trainings fail to positively influence the participants. The lines below highlight the ridiculousness of expecting participants to be gung ho about the training.

“Imagine what would happen if this approach were adopted when you fell in love. You would have a ARRSE (Adviser – Romance Risk Strategy Executive) come along to show you some PowerPoint slides on the risks of falling in love,issuing you with badges to say you are officially in love, and so on. So, why does common sense go out the window when we enter the crazy world of work?”

 This prompted me to pick up three most applicable points for risk management induction training from Peter’s book and I requested him to share his views on the same.

1.    Understand the audience

The one-size fits all doesn’t work for risk management training. For instance, in Indian ITES sector, new employees join right after school. To them, terms like audit, fraud, ethics are practically incomprehensible. Their head will spin if we give them a download on various laws and regulations in the first training session.

The same applies in other industries also.The choice is ours – to be either amused or appalled at their naiveté.  The story below depicts the level of understanding of a fresh recruit.

An experienced purchase manager working in food and beverages industry was offended with a new junior. The junior had accepted a gift from a supplier in their first meeting. The purchase manager called the junior to his room and asked in Hindi –“Do you understand ‘AAchar’ (ethics)?“ The junior replied in English– “Of course sir, it means pickles (Achar).”

This is the risk managers’ starting point for training. Therefore, prepare a training calendar with various sessions over 6 months to bring them up to speed. Peter mentioned that there are 57 ways to train besides classroom training – workshops, e-learning, mentoring, storytelling,  etc. Identify the staff learning styles and develop the training accordingly.

2.    Make training fun

I know it is tempting to give a few thousand pages to read to the participants. That is what we, as risk managers had to do. But remember the training participants haven’t signed in for a risk management professional course. Don’t give them manuals in the name of e-learning. That’s only going to make them panic. Make it simple and fun. Peter succinctly put this point across in his book. He says create an environment where people are naturally engaged. For example, he wrote:

Pubs do NOT have mission statements that say:

 “We aim to encourage sociosexual networking and leverage mission critical knowledge, skills and wisdom through the use of addictive depressant substances in a relaxing lifestyle environment that encourages the suppression of societal norms of decency and so on”

If you read this statement while entering a pub, will you immediately fall in love with the pub or hesitate to enter? Same rule applies to induction training. Why not explain the statutory stuff without using the corporate and risk management jargon?

3.    Help participants succeed

The biggest obstacle in the successful implementation of risk management training, is the attitude of the risk managers. The managers sometimes focus more on the numbers covered so that they can tick off from their to-do list and report to compliance that training was conducted. The trainers are not accountable to make the business teams effectively manage risks.

Sometimes, when the classroom training is over the participants do not know whom to connect with if they have questions when they start working. In some e-learning courses the same problem is exists.

Peter gives some good advice here. He says - “Make sure that new people understand on the first day exactly what they can do to succeed. Connect the new members with the people who can help them do their best”

Closing thoughts

Use induction training as a starting point to develop risk awareness and culture within the participants. Don’t make it a big ruse to cover numbers. If the training is good, the new employees will become unofficial ambassadors of risk management. By creating the right chemistry, risk managers will have long term allies in business teams. Make the start a memorable and happy one for the new employees, and they will keep coming back for more.