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The Hill Country Podcast

The Hill Country Podcast – Ari and Jessi Adler on Juggling Remote Work with Personal Passions

Welcome to award-winning The Hill Country Podcast. The Texas Hill Country is one of the most beautiful places on earth. In this podcast, Hill Country resident Tom Fox visits with the people and organizations that make this the most unique areas of Texas.

This week Tom visits with Ari and Jessi Adler, who travel the country working at State Parks and share their adventures on their YouTube site, Trekers.

Ari Adler and Jessi Adler are seasoned professionals in the world of public and media relations and journalism, with backgrounds in state government. They have channeled their shared passion for travel and hiking into their company, Trekers, and their love for adventure is further demonstrated through their remote work lifestyle living in a trailer.

Ari’s perspective on travel and hiking adventures is centered around inspiring others to explore new places and step out of their comfort zones, a viewpoint influenced by his own experience of visiting all 103 state parks in Michigan. Likewise, Jessi emphasizes seizing life’s opportunities and living in the moment, firmly believing in the transformative power of travel and outdoor experiences.

Their perspectives on travel and hiking stem from their personal experiences, backgrounds in state government, and a shared desire to explore and appreciate the world around them.

Key Highlights:

  • Combining Remote Work with Park Hosting
  • Juggling Remote Work with Personal Passions
  • State Park Exploration and Outdoor Adventures
  • Natural Wonders Across State and National Parks
  • Enhancing Outdoor Experiences Through Camping Gear

 Resources

Trekers

Other Hill Country Focused Podcasts

Hill Country Authors Podcast

Hill Country Artists Podcast

Texas Hill Country Podcast Network

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Career Can D0

The Intersection of Sports and Business with Pete Steinberg

What can leaders learn from elite athletes, and how can they navigate leadership shock in the ever-changing work world?

In this Career Can Do podcast episode, host Mary Ann Faremouth delves into these questions with leadership and innovation expert Pete Steinberg.

Through their insightful conversation, listeners gain valuable insights on maximizing potential, differentiating between stress and leadership shock, and the importance of building relationships in the workplace.

Join Mary Ann and Pete as they explore the intersection of high performance in sports and business, offering practical advice for individuals seeking to excel in their careers.

Have you heard of leadership shock? Pete and Mary Ann discuss the concepts of leadership shock and stress. Leadership shock occurs when there is a significant change in a leader’s context, such as a new role or organizational shift, leading to feelings of confusion and inefficiency. On the other hand, stress is seen as a temporary pressure that can actually help individuals perform better. By differentiating between the two, leaders can address the root causes of their challenges and work towards more effective leadership strategies.

Traditional hiring practices focus on experience. Pete’s ideas on hiring successfully are rather different. He emphasizes the importance of hiring based on attributes rather than solely focusing on experience. Commitment, passion, attention to detail, and innovation are key qualities to look for in potential candidates. While experience and skills can be developed over time, attributes are inherent traits that can significantly impact an individual’s performance and contribution to the organization.

Relationships are key both at work and in life. Mary Ann and Pete dive into the significance of building relationships in the workplace, especially in the current post-COVID work environment. Pete highlights the value of face-to-face interactions and creating a sense of purpose when employees come into the office. Strong relationships can enhance employee engagement, productivity, and overall satisfaction. Building a culture of meaningful interactions and teamwork can contribute to the success and longevity of the business.

Resources:

Pete Steinberg | Website | LinkedIn

Faremouth.com

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Daily Compliance News

Daily Compliance News: May 1, 2024 – The 4-Month Edition

Welcome to the Daily Compliance News. Each day, Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance, brings you compliance-related stories to start your day. Sit back, enjoy a cup of morning coffee and listen to the Daily Compliance News. All from the Compliance Podcast Network.

Each day, we consider four stories from the business world: compliance, ethics, risk management, leadership, or general interest for the compliance professional.

In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • CZ gets 4 months. (WSJ)
  • FCPA violator Ericsson bemoans ‘over-regulation’. (FT)
  • Can’t get a contract? Sue the lawyers. (Reuters)
  • Meta sued the EU over election misinformation.  (NYT)

For more information on the Ethico ROI Calculator and a free White Paper on the ROI of Compliance, click here.

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Compliance Tip of the Day

Compliance Tip of the Day: A Toxic Culture and The Fraud Triangle

Welcome to “Compliance Tip of the Day,” the podcast where we bring you daily insights and practical advice on navigating the ever-evolving landscape of compliance and regulatory requirements.

Whether you’re a seasoned compliance professional or just starting your journey, our aim is to provide you with bite-sized, actionable tips to help you stay on top of your compliance game.

Join us as we explore the latest industry trends, share best practices, and demystify complex compliance issues to keep your organization on the right side of the law.

Tune in daily for your dose of compliance wisdom, and let’s make compliance a little less daunting, one tip at a time.

In this episode, we review the interesting intersection of a toxic corporate culture and the fraud triangle.

For more information on the Ethico ROI Calculator and a free White Paper on the ROI of Compliance, click here.

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Great Women in Compliance

Great Women in Compliance: Jess Nall on Defending Tech Innovators

Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast. In this episode, Hemma visits with Jess Nall, a partner at Baker McKenzie.

Jess is a leader of Baker McKenzie’s AI and Cyber practice and
leads the Firm’s government defense practice in the US heart of technological innovation, the San Francisco Bay Area. For more than twenty years, Jess has defended technology innovators in high-profile federal and state government enforcement and investigations involving AI, cyber-security, algorithmic price-fixing, economic espionage, and trade sanctions.

With two decades of tech law experience under her belt and playing a pivotal role in various global technology enforcement cases, Jess has a grounded understanding of the complexities surrounding AI compliance and enforcement. She highlights the rapidly evolving global regulation and the increasing pressure it places on compliance professionals.

Jess advocates for a proactive approach to comprehension and readiness for the enforcement and governance aspects of AI, encouraging clients to have robust good faith narratives that illustrate their compliance efforts. This perspective is formed not only from her substantial professional experience but also her deep understanding of the potential risks and malpractices related to the use of AI technology.

Key Highlights:

  • AI Regulations: Impact on Businesses and Compliance
  • Navigating Risks in AI Compliance and Enforcement
  • Deceptive AI Marketing Practices in Industry
  • Fostering Collaboration for AI Compliance Success
  • Enhancing Regulatory Compliance with AI Analytics
  • Enhancing Legal Access with AI Translation

Resources:
Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.

AI Strategy: The Whole Brain Approach Will Win in forbes.com

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Compliance Into the Weeds

Compliance into the Weeds: What Are Boards Doing About AI (Hint: Not Much)

The award winning, Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast which takes a deep dive into a compliance related topic, literally going into the weeds to more fully explore a subject.

Looking for some hard-hitting insights on compliance? Look no further than Compliance into the Weeds! In this episode, Tom and Matt look into corporate reports on their Boards’ oversight of AI.

As the world ventures deeper into the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the issue of corporate governance over AI is emerging as a crucial point of discussion. Tech giants such as Google are facing demands for more board-level attention to AI risk management due to concerns about the lack of transparency and oversight.

Tom highlights this lack of detailed consideration of AI at the board level, raising doubts about whether boards are suitably prepared for AI’s rapid development and potential enforcement risks. His concerns are rooted in limited mentions of AI in proxy statements of S&P 500 companies, suggesting current practices might not be sufficient for the future.

Meanwhile, Matt emphasizes the need for boards to start considering staffing, expertise, and risk management related to AI without necessarily forming dedicated AI committees at present. Kelly’s concerns stem from the lack of detail in proxy statements about what boards are currently doing with AI, especially in tech-heavy companies like Google, indicating the need for potential formation of dedicated committees or sub-specializations in the future.

 Key Highlights:

  • AI Risk Management: Tech vs. Non-Tech Perspectives
  • Enhancing Corporate Governance Through AI Oversight
  • Technology Risk Oversight in Evolving Companies
  • AI Oversight for Corporate Boards: Future Risks

Resources:

Matt on Radical Compliance

 Tom 

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

LinkedIn

Categories
Blog

Culture Week: Part 3 – A Toxic Culture and the Fraud Triangle

We continue our exploration of corporate culture. Today, we consider the intersection of the Fraud Triangle and a toxic culture.

The Fraud Triangle is well-known to most compliance practitioners. It is pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. When these three factors converge, there is a danger of an ethical lapse that could violate the law. Bribery and corruption under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) are types of fraud in which the employee or employees do not keep the direct proceeds of their conduct but enrich the company. Of course, if their collective bonuses are drawn from fraudulent conduct, the cycle is complete around how the Fraud Triangle applies to the FCPA.

Bret Hood, writing in a Fraud Magazine article, entitled Twisted Rationalization, said the following: “We might commonly assume that fraudsters choose to commit fraud by deploying rational cost-benefit analyses of potential rewards against the consequences of being caught. However, most fraud perpetrators completely ignore this calculation. Most of their decisions are automatic and unconscious. Sometimes, others massage circumstances so the fraudulent decision maker doesn’t comprehend the ethical implications.”

That sounds suspiciously like someone who has been treated so poorly in a toxic culture that they feel like they have nothing to lose.

David Schrieberg, writing in a Forbes.com article entitled How Does Corporate Culture Fuel Fraud? Start With Volkswagen And Wells Fargo, cited to Steve Morang, who said of those entities and their scandals, “The brains behind the strategic decisions that organizations make, whether Volkswagen or Walmart or Wells Fargo, don’t understand that those decisions, as they get implemented and trickle down the organization, could very much affect their fraud risk profile.” These comments were aimed at the culture of sales, but those same cultural morals created a toxic culture in both organizations. I believe the Fraud Triangle provides insights for compliance professionals to help adapt a compliance program to prevent fraud that leads to bribery and corruption.

Todd Haugh, an assistant professor of business law and ethics at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, posited in an MIT Sloan Management Review article entitled The Trouble With Corporate Compliance Programs that even best practices compliance programs fail to take into account behavioral best practices, and one important, but too often overlooked, key to strengthening both individual and overall corporate behavior is eliminating rationalizations.

Haugh’s conclusions were drawn from his long-term research on the causes of white-collar crime and more general corporate wrongdoing. His research has led him to flagrant rationalizations engaged in by those who commit white-collar crimes. This insight led him to see the behavioral aspect of compliance programs as lacking, but that can be remedied. He listed eight different types of rationalizations.

The first is simply denying responsibility. When offenders “deny responsibility by pleading ignorance, they were acting under orders, or contending that larger economic forces caused them to act.” In denying an injury, “an offender often excuses his or her behavior if no clear harm exists.” In denying a victim, the offenders claim the “victim deserved the harm; or when the victim is unknown or not clearly defined.” Through condemning the condemners, “offender’s conduct is to attack the motives of others, such as regulators, prosecutors, and government agencies.” By appealing to higher loyalties, the fraudster claims “to protect a boss or employee, shore up a failing business, or maximize shareholder value.” By using a ledger metaphor, employees claim there is a “behavioral balance sheet” whereby employees “balance out negative actions against positive accomplishments.” Through claiming entitlement offenders assert “that they deserve the fruits of their illegal behavior.” In claiming acceptability or normality, employees compare their “bad acts with those of others to relieve moral guilt.” The FCPA violator has probably several of these rationalizations going on at once. The compliance professional needs to look for ways to counter-act or overcome them.

Haugh considers the Wells Fargo scandal, not from the actions of the former Chief Executive Officer or other senior executives but from the failure of the company’s ethical culture and compliance program to stem illegal conduct. He believes the scandal occurred in large part because of multiple rationalizations at multiple levels, stating “preliminary reports suggest it allowed an environment riddled by employee rationalizations. On the heels of the bank’s $185 million settlement agreement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a number of former employees have reported that, despite ethics training and messages from headquarters to not create fake accounts, the bank’s aggressive sales culture drowned out any explicit compliance measures.”

Haugh believes the “compliance program failed to address the systemic problem of managers pressuring employees to meet unrealistic sales goals.” He cited to one former employee on the pressure employees felt, quoting “The reality was that people had to meet their [sales] goals. They needed a paycheck.” It was this push by management that led employees, under pressure to meet unrealistic goals, to rationalize their conduct by denying responsibility and claiming relative normality in creating fraudulent accounts. Also remember that the fraudulent accounts were not limited in geographic or any other scope. They were literally created across the U.S. by Wells Fargo branches.

As a prescription, Haugh recommends several steps. The first was one of the most intriguing and it was for a company to employ a behavioral specialist to take current research and theory into practice in an organization. He believes such a behavioral specialist could help multiple corporate departments construct both training and communications by creating “a behavioral compliance curriculum tailored to various groups of employees, giving all members of the organization insight into their ethical decision-making processes. Such a curriculum can become the backbone of a behaviorally cognizant compliance program.” Note how Haugh’s suggestion on a tailored approach to training echoes the language from the DOJ’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (Evaluation) to have tailored anti-corruption training. Wedding these two types of tailored employee training, anti-corruption and anti-fraud, could be quite powerful.

Haugh’s next suggestion was to “use behavioral best practices to eliminate rationalizations.” He believes that the compliance practitioner should use behavioral insights to improve company practices. When you consider that most compliance programs were initially written by lawyers, this is not too surprising. He wrote, “This will necessarily go beyond the traditional law-driven compliance practices employed by the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies.”

Haugh advocates that compliance programs should attack rationalizations directly, with an aim towards eliminating them. Here Haugh provided the simple yet direct example of an honesty certificate on an employee gift, travel and entertainment (GTE) reimbursement form as a starting point. I would add this has the added significance of an effective internal control. He also noted that companies should facilitate communications around fraud, rationalizations and, compliance by encouraging “employees to openly discuss rationalizations and how they affect ethical decision-making. This can be accomplished through storytelling by employees and the company. Employees should be encouraged, even required, to meet periodically in small groups to explore the potential effects of compliance violations and white-collar crimes.” To make this communication technique more powerful and to make this strategy more powerful is to fully operationalize by having business leaders guide such discussions including “topics such as what regulations are relevant to the business, common compliance pitfalls, and how some business practices produce externalities that negatively impact stakeholders.”

Finally, every compliance practitioner is well-aware of the role of financial incentives in compliance. I write about this topic on a regular basis. But Haugh takes the incentives discussion in a different direction, suggesting there are non-monetary incentives that could positively impact compliance. Haugh concludes by noting that companies should “use incentives to influence behavior in the right direction” by understanding how rationalizations come into play. Most interestingly, Haugh believes that employee “praise and expressions of gratitude motivate more than money”. Think of the cost of a good word now and then or a pat on the back. But more than a pat on the back, such an approach emphasizes that good compliance is seen as the “governing ethos” of the company where the goal is “to build a corporate culture that incentivizes the rejection of rationalizations through the creation of shared values.”

Haugh concludes by recognizing that no compliance program will always eliminate bad employee behavior. However, his article and research give the compliance practitioner new insights into how to motivate employees and to make compliance more effective in an organization. Further, many of the ideas and suggestions put forth by Haugh would help to operationalize your compliance program more fully, as specified by the DOJ in the 2023 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs. Finally, the use of behavioral techniques can add a powerful tool to the compliance practitioner in more fully integrating a good culture into your organization.

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Uncovering Hidden Risks

Ep 8 – Three Steps to Master Information Governance in Your Organization

Randolph Kahn, a globally recognized leader in information governance and President of Khan Consulting, joins Erica and guest host Natalie Noonan on this week’s episode of Uncovering Hidden Risks. Randolph has been an expert witness in significant court cases and is a trusted advisor to corporations and governmental agencies. He is also an accomplished author, speaker, and adjunct professor of Law and Policy of Electronic Information and The Politics of Information. Randolph and Erica discuss Information Governance and the industry trends they are currently seeing in this space.

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • How does the increase in regulations affect current data management trends?
  • Why organizations are suffering information mismanagement failures
  •  If current technological capabilities and functionality are sufficient

Some Questions We Ask:

  • What requirements are important for information governance?
  • Why should organizations take advantage of newer technologies?
  • What’s next after an organization has identified its new requirements?

Resources:

View Randolph Kahn on LinkedIn

View Natalie Noonan on LinkedIn

View Erica Toelle on LinkedIn

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