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This Week in FCPA

Episode 197 – the Compliance Doesn’t Sleep edition


While the coronavirus dominated the news this past week, compliance doesn’t sleep and neither did we. Self-distancing Tom and Jay are back to consider some of the other top compliance articles and stories which caught their eye this week.

  1. Compliance Week has a plethora of articles relating to Coronavirus. Aaron Nicodemus considers why ethics pays; Jaclyn Jaeger on designing a crisis management plan and Dave Lefort on why ethical leadership is even more critical now.
  2. Chilling from home? Dick Cassin offers some good compliance-related movies for socially distanced compliance professionals in the FCPA Blog.
  3. Revisiting inherent conflicts of interest. Jeff Kaplan in the Conflict of Interest Blog.
  4. Coronavirus is no excuse for not being vigilant. Kevin Abikoff and Mike Huneke in the FCPA Blog.
  5. Charles Middleton says we should stop blackballing whistleblowers. In CCI.
  6. What are MLATs and are they abused? Dave Michaels and Aruna Viswanatha in the WSJ Risk and Compliance Journal.
  7. Mike Volkov takes a deep dive into an Anti-Trust Compliance Program in a 3-part series on Corruption, Crime & Compliance. Part 1-Risk Assessments, Part 2– Ethical Culture and Monitoring, Part 3- Training and Speak Up and Reporting Systems.
  8. What’s the Board’s role in the coronavirus crisis? Jonathan Marks in the BoardandFraud Blog.
  9. Is Managerial Entrenchment Always Bad and Corporate Social Responsibility Always Good? In the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.
  10. Reflections on the Golden Boy from Jay.
  11. On the Compliance Podcast Network, Tom opens a new month by looking at the role of innovation in compliance on 31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program. This week saw the following offerings: Monday-the Digital Twin and P&L of One; Tuesday-Superforecasting; Wednesday-blockchain for compliance; Thursday-Design Thinking for compliance; Friday-AI as a competitive advantage. Note 31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program now has its own iTunes channel. If you want to binge out and listen to only these episodes, click here. This month’s sponsor is Affiliated Monitors, Inc.

Tom Fox is the Compliance Evangelist and can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Jay Rosen is Mr. Monitor and can be reached at jrosen@affiliatedmonitors.com.

Categories
Creativity and Compliance

Are You Corona-Cancelled? Be Creative!


Where does creativity fit into compliance? In more places than you think. Problem-solving, accountability, communication, and connection – they all take creativity. Join Tom Fox and Ronnie Feldman on Creativity and Compliance, part of the Compliance Podcast Network to explore these issues. Today’s episode asks has your compliance training has been Conrona-Cancelled? We provide some things you can create to supplement your routine training and communication. Some of the highlights include:

  • Create a virtual ‘Ethics and Compliance Live Show’ – a fun and entertaining way to communicate compliance topics.
  • What might a show consist of?
    • An original song;
    • An Opening Monologue;
    • A Top Ten list
    • An original skit around compliance;
    • Visit with the CCO about the skit;
    • Virtual Q&A; and
    • Closing compliance tune.
  • How about a Colbert-style show?
  • A Johnny Carson-style show?
  • A David Letterman-style show?
  • Always remember, you are only limited by your imagination.
  • Maintain Fun – Variety and Surprise. Novelty breads engagement. Need to constantly switch it up. Try lots of little things.
  • What are some of the additional pluses during this current time?
    • These formats are powerful mediums that can be digested in small increments when working remotely.
    • You can still make a personal connection.
    • You can still educate and make the training/communication interesting.
    • It can all be digested on the employees time.

Ronnie Feldman
Ronnie Feldman (LinkedIn)
Learnings & Entertainments (LinkedIn)
Ronnie Feldman (Twitter)
Learnings & Entertainments (Website)
60-Second Communication & Awareness Shorts – A variety of short, customizable, quick-hitter “commercials” including songs & jingles, video shorts, newsletter graphics & Gifs, and more. Promote integrity, compliance, the Code, the helpline and the E&C team as helpful advisors and coaches.
Workplace Tonight Show! Micro-learning – a library of 1-10-minute trainings and communications wrapped in the style of a late-night variety show, that explains corporate risk topics and why employees should care.
Custom Live & Digital Programing – We’ll develop programming that fits your culture and balances the seriousness of the subject matter with a more engaging delivery.

Categories
Daily Compliance News

March 20, 2020-the Where are you working?edition


In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

Design Thinking for Compliance


Design thinking is another innovation which can help the CCO move forward in a cutting-edge manner to make a compliance program not only more robust but also operationalize it into the fabric of the company. Such a mechanism would help to drive compliance into the operational nature of a company.
This design thinking protocol can help to create a more effective ethics and compliance training model by using employees to provide the initial input to improve its effectiveness and relevance to the front-line employees. The compliance team then implements several proposed solutions until the most operative one or ones becomes apparent. These are then rolled out companywide for better and more effective compliance training. As the entire process is documented, when the regulators, such as the DOJ or SEC, come knocking, you will have the ability to not only explain your training but also demonstrate its effectiveness.
Three key takeaways:

  1. Design thinking concepts are not simply for product innovation but for culture innovation.
  2. Design thinking works around the users’ needs rather internal operating efficiencies. For a compliance program, this means employees, third-parties and customers.
  3. Design thinking works to improve your compliance regime by building from the ground up rather than a legalistic top-down approach.
Categories
Trekking Through Compliance

Picard-Episode 7, Nepenthe


Welcome to a special series of Trekking Through Compliance, the podcast series inspired by my review of Star Trek, the Original Series. In this special series I am joined by another uber Star Trek maven, Megan Dougherty, co-founder of One Stone Creative. In this series we will review the new television show Picardwhich is currently streaming on CBS.

SPOILER ALERT-Although we will review each episode after it appears, we will discuss each episode in depth.

Episode 7, Nepenthe. A flashback reveals that Commodore Oh mind-melded with Jurati to convince her of the danger of synthetic life, and had her ingest a tracking device. Picard takes Soji to William Riker and Deanna Troi’s home on the planet Nepenthe. They offer Picard sanctuary, and their daughter Kestra tries to befriend Soji. Soji learns that she’s an android, and has trouble trusting anyone after Narek’s betrayal; but she tells them about her dream, and Kestra is able to learn the planet’s location from a family friend. Kestra convinces Soji to trust Picard. Meanwhile, Narissa kills Hugh and the other ex-Borg; before dying, Hugh tells Elnor that he needs a former Borg to activate the Queen’s cell and retake control of the Artifact. Elnor uses an SOS beacon Seven left Picard to call for help. La Sirena’s crew tries to get to Nepenthe but are being chased by Narek, who is following the tracker in Jurati. Feeling guilty, Jurati uses a neurotoxin to put herself in a coma and disable the tracker. La Sirena eventually reaches Nepenthe and picks up Picard and Soji.

Highlights, speculations and questions include: 

1.     Did Hugh have to die?

2.     What did you feel during the reunion of Riker, Troi and Picard?

3.     What are some of the cookies in this show?

4.     Does Kestra instruct us on how to deal with grief?

5.     Is Oh a Vulcan?

Categories
Daily Compliance News

March 19, 2020-the $60bn Bailout for Boeing Boy edition

In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Boeing wants $60bn bailout. (WSJ)
  • Could regime change in Guyana sink Exxon? (NYT)
  • Opposition to the mineral disclosure requirement. (WSJ)
  • Sacklers given another 6 months of protection. (WSJ)
Categories
Great Women in Compliance

Penny Milner-Smyth on What the Brain Has to do with Compliance


Welcome to the Great Women in Compliance Podcast, co-hosted by Lisa Fine and Mary Shirley. In episode 55 we highlight some of the hottest areas in Compliance right now – behavioral and cognitive science.  At its core, Compliance is really about shaping behaviors so it is no surprise why Compliance Officers are taking an increasing interest in behavioral economics and how we can use it to better understand our key stakeholders and use the information as tools to help shape the culture of integrity in our companies.  The Great Women in Compliance team loves to talk about the issues of the day so we took the opportunity to invite Penny Milner-Smyth, who has a psychology educational background and now uses research to help Compliance teams succeed, to be on the show.
Penny speaks with Mary Shirley about how we as Compliance Officers can foster psychological safety in the workplace and use that to encourage deployment of your reporting hotline.  It’s critical aspiration for companies to reach – Google researchers identified psychological safety as the number one factor of importance in successful teams.
In Compliance, particularly during investigations, we often come across employees who are described as bad actors.  Penny gives us the lowdown on whether people are ever easily compartmentalized into the categories of good and bad and helps us to identify factors that tend to “push” good people to do bad things.
Penny’s insights and practical advice from an organizational psychology perspective, including how you can get increased ethical behavior from your workforce just by being conscious of where on employee forms you place certain wording, is not to be missed!
See Mary’s article Why You Should Draft a Compliance Mission Statement, on Corporate Compliance Insights.
Join the Great Women in Compliance community on LinkedIn here.

Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

Blockchain will transform compliance


One of the most significant innovations in compliance will come through the incorporation of blockchain into compliance. I see great value propositions for the compliance function. There are two specific areas where I see blockchain directly impacting the compliance profession. The first is with third-parties. The second area where blockchain provides a potential game changer is contracts, specifically around compliance terms and conditions.
This final point is operationalizing compliance. It will be interesting to see when the DOJ or SEC will begin to comment on blockchain as a part of a best practices compliance program.
Three key takeaways:

  1. Blockchain has great potential for the compliance profession.
  2. Blockchain can facilitate the third-party due diligence and update requirements.
  3. Blockchain can provide a clear trigger for compliance terms and conditions.
Categories
Compliance Into the Weeds

Episode 162-Flattening the COVID-19 Curve


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. As with many of you, we are overwhelmed with COVID-19 information. Matt and I want to bring some clarity, if not sanity to the conversation. To that end, in this episode we take a deep dive into the need to integrate public health measures into our private enterprise operations, now and for the foreseeable future.
Some of the highlights include:

  • What is some of the positive news coming out of China?
  • How did China’s lockdown help slow the virus?
  • Why do we need to use the time to integrate public health measures into private sector operations?
  • What are some of these public health measures?
  • Why are isolation and quarantine key?
  • If we get it under control, how do we prevent another outbreak?
  • What are some practical starting points for businesses to think through at this time?
  • What should businesses be thinking about 30, 60, 90 days out?

Resources
Matt Kelly blog post, The Downslope Risks of COVID-19

Categories
Daily Compliance News

March 18, 2020-the Be Farewell to the Golden Boy edition


In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Apple fined $1bn plus in Europe. (WSJ)
  • FinCen urges caution out there. (CadwaladerCabinet)
  • Worried about coronavirus? How about asbestos? (WSJ)
  • The golden boy announces he’s leaving. (Slate)